AgFunder

The world is entering a new era of food and agriculture transformation. Long-term consumer trends towards health and sustainability, along with a growing and more affluent population, are driving the demand for more efficient and sustainable food production methods. Fueled by recent technological breakthroughs, increasing government support, and a focus on resource allocation, the traditional agriculture industry is facing significant disruption and pressure to adapt. Lever VC backs the entrepreneurs creating the future of food and agriculture. What we look for Lever VC invests in companies creating the future of food and agriculture, encompassing anything that drives improvements in sustainability and ESG targets in the current food system. For novel ingredient companies, such as providers of sustainable commodity goods, nutraceuticals, proteins, flavorings, or fats, we look to invest in companies with significantly improved quality, price, sustainability, and functionality, that demonstrate product-market fit. For technology-driven companies across the food and agriculture supply chain, we look to invest as early as possible in global or regional pioneers of technologies that create ingredients, inputs, services, machinery, or products that generate significant improvements compared to state-of-the-art incumbents and have a clear path to market-accessible price points. For product-driven companies in the better-for-you, pet food, and plant-based space, we look to invest early in companies that are #1 or #2 in quality in their broad geographic region, in product categories with large total addressable markets that are not over-saturated, and that have demonstrated early sales traction and strong weekly unit turnover. In all categories, we look for reasonable deal terms and fantastic founding teams with the vision, work ethic, good judgment, intelligence, and self-awareness needed to build an incredibly successful company. Lever VC conducts robust, lead-level due diligence before every investmentSourcing Lever sources deals from our extensive personal networks in the sector, robust inbound cold contacts, incubator and accelerator partners, and trade media and sales channel monitoring. Tracking The Fund tracks and monitors over 5,000 companies in the protein landscape through its proprietary database, allowing for robust peer analysis and early detection of breakout growth. Scientific and Technical Review Lever utilizes its in-house scientific expertise to conduct extensive technical review on all relevant deals via interviews, data analysis, IP and academic literature reviews, and site visits. Due Diligence The Fund conducts lead-level due diligence before all investments, including financial modeling, returns analysis, taste panels, site visits, competitor analysis, and general financial and strategy reviews. Lever VC's deep sector experience allows it to provide portfolio companies with much more than just capital The Fund taps its extensive network of investors in the category to help portfolio companies raise follow-on rounds with value-add partners. It utilizes its connections with leading food companies around the globe to help portfolio companies secure product development, scale-up and sales partnerships. It draws on years of experience investing across scores of companies in the Food and AgTech sectors (and reviewing thousands more) to advise on commercial and marketing strategies. Lever VC prefers to lead or co-lead rounds and to take board or board observer seats when possible, although neither is required.

Pioneers in deploying venture capital into high impact agrifood tech since 2014, we back ambitious teams that are reconnecting and strengthening the link between human health and the health of the planet through innovative technology. Clay Capital was founded with the belief that food is both the cause of, and remedy to, some of today’s most urgent challenges: environmental degradation, societal inequity, and human health. We see these issues as interconnected.In Europe and Asia especially, there is a generation of entrepreneurs motivated to tackle the $12 trillion market opportunity that lies in restoring and reconnecting human and planetary health - and who have a toolkit fit for purpose: from farmers and chefs, to biotechnologists, computational biologistics, plant scientists, computer engineers and multidisciplinary teams merging these skillsets. There is no single silver bullet; transforming a system that has supported humanity in its evolution from Nomadic to Agrarian, and been the seed that rooted and grew societies around the globe, will not happen overnight. Therefore, there’s an urgent need for both transitional solutions and revolutionary new infrastructure. We aim to back both, and enable a healthier food system to co-exist with a healthier planet within our lifetimes. Clay Capital invests to strengthen and refocus how materials are produced and consumed through innovation to have sustainable, nutritious, and circular outcomes. This context presents us with unrivalled opportunities for smart investing - investments that address urgent issues today, for a better tomorrow.

We are the corporate venture capital arm of Paulig, investing in startups that contribute to a tastier, healthier and more sustainable planet. We seek financial and societal impact in our investments, as well as a strategic link between Paulig and the startups we back. As an evergreen fund connected to a 150-year-old family-owned business, we don’t have a determined time for exit and always act in the best joint interest of the startup and investors. Our investment focus PINC was launched as Paulig Incubator in 2018 to help Paulig stay in the forefront of relevant innovations, as well as to contribute to a tastier, healthier and more sustainable planet. Today, our ambition is the same, but we have developed into a corporate venture arm. We aim for strategic, financial, and societal impact in our investments, fostering a sustainable food system for tomorrow. We are investing across the agrifood value chain in three primary impact themes: Improve planetary health and diet within the current food system: This includes innovations in agriculture and food security, such as advanced crop breeding or green fertilizers, innovative ingredients and next generation healthy foods, as well as solutions for tracking and improving climate and nature. Novel technologies to feed 10 BN people by 2050: Technologies needed to sustainably produce enough food for our growing population. This includes food production without land use change, such as precision fermentation and cell-cultivation. A circular system for food & materials: Regardless of whether we grow our food in soil or in bioreactors, the system needs to be circular. Some examples are upcycled ingredients, food from unused sources, new coating and packaging solutions, as well as technologies to prevent or make better use of side streams. We are looking for entrepreneurs in an attractive market space with an intrinsic drive to find a solution to the problem they are addressing, a clear and scalable plan for success, a complimentary team and partners whom we can trust and work closely with. We value collaboration and are proactively working with building strong investment syndicates, in which we’re flexible in our role as co-investor, co-lead, or lead investor, if there is a strong strategic link. As a corporate venture capital and evergreen fund, we always act in the best joint interest of the startup and investors. Investment criteriaPre-seed & seed Entry ticket €200k-€1M Focus on the Nordics & Europe Strategic link to Paulig preferred Flexible in the role as co-investor, co-lead, or lead investor Our offer We’re a value driven team with financial, operational, and strategic experience and capabilities. We have a hands-on approach and support founders when needed or actively through board roles. Our extensive Nordic and European network of investors and innovation-enablers can help to accelerate development and scale-up efforts. Moreover, PINC serves as an entryway to Paulig for collaborations, consumer insights, expert guidance in brand and product development, and access to a vast European sales and distribution network.

Sucden Ventures is a venture capital specialist formed by Sucden in 2020 to invest in innovative early-stage growth companies in the food and agricultural sector. Sucden Ventures aims to support disruptive and impactful technologies that can transform the food supply chain in the fields of sustainability, efficiency but also health and nutrition. Sucden Ventures will take advantage of the competitive benefits offered by the Sucden network of companies and partners, built over decades across many regions, and from Sucden’s industrial and agricultural assets. SPECIALIST AREAS We're looking to support innovation and development in three specialist and growing areas of the food tech and agri tech ecosystem. They are: alternative proteins, both cell-based and plant-based alternative or new ingredients plant and crop sciences. PORTFOLIO COMPANIES Sucden Ventures has already made, and currently maintains, several direct investments in new companies innovating in the field of new ingredients. Alongside its historical partner, Continental Grain, Sucden Ventures has also made co-investments in a dozen of companies. One of which uses natural fermentation of mushrooms to create novel plant-based ingredients and transformative technology, offering solutions for sugar reduction, food insecurity, sustainable protein, natural immune support and much more. Another company looks at leveraging plant and crop sciences to offer a clean alternative to synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. INVESTMENT APPROACH We make investments in relatively early-stage growth companies in the specialist sectors mentioned above, potentially anywhere in the world. We aim to be an active minority investor, looking to support our portfolio companies in: business development testing new solutions through our commercial, industrial and agricultural network growing internationally.

We work with leading corporations, startups, universities, and growers to solve the biggest challenges facing the food and agriculture industries. Accelerator Program We support seed stage startups from all areas of the value chain whose technologies drive us toward a more efficient, sustainable & secure agriculture future. THRIVE TOP 50 THRIVE Top 50 is an annual ranking of leading global AgTech and FoodTech companies exemplifying the best in agriculture and food focused innovation. SVG Ventures | THRIVE SVG Ventures | THRIVE invests in all companies that go through our award winning accelerator program and make follow on investments in some of these companies in subsequent stages.

We've identified one of the largest value gaps in society. Healthcare systems globally are overwhelmed by preventable chronic disease, yet agriculture can deliver the same health outcomes 100x more efficiently. We invest in AgriHealth: Entrepreneurs innovating in agriculture with technology to exploit this gap. Our portfolio companies enable the largest preventive healthcare system that exists and make traditional healthcare costs obsolete. The result is outlier returns from the transformation of trillion-dollar markets. Welcome to the AgriHealth Evolution which stars with The First Thirty centimeters of soil. We owe everything to THE FIRST THIRTY cm of soil A complex ecosystem that enables the life systems we need to survive and thrive: clean air, water and food. Theory of Change The Challenge: The £8 trillion agriculture and food system and £8 trillion healthcare burden are interconnected yet misaligned. Decades of optimising for yield and volume have degraded health of soils, plants and animals (including humans), driving preventable chronic diseases and reducing mutiple years from our health span. Our Approach: Invest in the enabling technologies and intelligence platforms that quantify the connections between biological quality and human health outcomes. By making these invisible relationships measurable and monetisable, we transform commodity-driven supply chains into high quality-differentiated markets. The Impact: A preventative healthcare revolution rooted in agricultural quality, where biological data drives economic value, human vitality, and ecosystem resilience simultaneously. Delivering superior returns while addressing our era's most pressing health challenges. What we look for Systems-Level Expertise: We back teams with deep, cross-disciplinary knowledge scientific, commercial, and contextual. Founders who understand the complex dynamics of food, health, and ecological systems and know how to navigate them Nature-Aligned Advantage: We look for companies that work with, not against, living systems. The strongest competitive edge comes from amplifying nature’s health, not extracting from it. Scalable by Design: Solving for planetary and human health demands solutions that scale rapidly, efficiently, and with minimal resource intensity. We invest in models built to grow without compromising integrity. Intelligence Through Measurement: You can’t manage what you don’t measure. We seek businesses that rigorously quantify biological, health, and impact outcomes guiding better decisions and building trust along the way. Technology Meets Ancient Intelligence: We invest in platforms that unlock nature’s deep intelligence using modern tools whether through data, sensors, AI, or biological computation. The goal: to regenerate, not just optimise. Where Health Creates Value: We look for ventures that align economic success with improved health outcomes for people and planet. Regeneration must be not only measurable, but profitable.