Alexander Hoffmann

🚀 Dutch AgTech startup BBLeap has secured €5 million to enhance its precision spraying technology on a global scale. This investment, led by ESquare Capital and Yield Lab Europe, along with existing investors like BOM, underscores growing confidence in sustainable agricultural solutions. Founded in 2019 by Peter Millenaar, Martijn van Alphen, and Rieks Kampman, BBLeap is revolutionizing farming with its LeapBox and LeapEye systems. These technologies ensure each plant receives precise treatment, significantly reducing chemical use and boosting crop health. BBLeap's advanced technology, which offers centimeter-level accuracy and real-time adjustments, is already being used by over 200 users across Europe, Australia, and now Canada. With chemical usage reductions of up to 99% and productivity gains of up to 40%, the company is poised to expand globally. For more information, visit: https://lnkd.in/eSzp7vqy Stay updated on the UK and European ecosystem by signing up for our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eNX39Mhu #AgTech #Innovation #Sustainability #Investment #Startups #Business

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New year, same discussion Is there really enough capital in agritech? Last year, a well-known voice in the Dutch ecosystem argued that there is no shortage of capital, just not enough good startups and/or talents. I’ve been thinking about that claim again, based on what I see across dozens of agritech and foodtech ventures. In agritech, companies do get funded. But often only after many years. Eight to ten or even 15 years is not unusual. What stands out is that, in many of those cases, the core business model hasn’t fundamentally changed over that time. The market was already there. The logic of the solution was already clear. What did change is the perceived risk. Time, small(er) pilots, grants and sheer survival slowly move a company from “too risky” to “acceptable”. Not because the idea suddenly became better, the business model changed or the scale up happend but because it became more familiar and more comfortable to finance. At the same time, capital is not only cautious, it is also declining and increasingly concentrated. After the peak years of 2021–2022, both European tech and global agrifoodtech investment volumes have fallen sharply. What capital is being deployed is flowing into a smaller number of larger, later-stage deals, while early-stage and capital-intensive ventures struggle to raise meaningful rounds. In practice, this means fewer chances to take risk early, longer gaps between rounds, and a strong bias toward software-like models that are easier to price, scale and exit. From the founder side, that doesn’t feel like “plenty of capital” it feels like capital that shows up late, and only for a narrow subset of business models. That makes me question whether the statement “there aren’t enough good startups/talents” really captures the problem. Or whether we are mostly rewarding maturity and survivorship, rather than backing promising models early enough for them to scale efficiently. If we want agritech to move faster, the discussion shouldn’t only be about how much capital there is but about what kind of risk we are actually willing to finance, and at what stage. https://lnkd.in/e2S3ZApM https://lnkd.in/e8_w53uB https://lnkd.in/eztCyJYz farm-32

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The Dutch startup Mosa Meat recently secured $17.6 million in new funding, ensuring its financial stability through 2028 as it moves toward its first commercial launch. This capital injection comes at a pivotal time when the company has successfully slashed production costs by 99.999% since debuting the world’s first lab-grown burger in 2013. By focusing on cultivated beef fat to enhance flavor, the firm has reached a price point suitable for restaurant menus. Currently, the organization is navigating regulatory approval processes in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Switzerland, and the European Union, with British markets expected to lead the way. Despite a broader downturn in the food tech sector that has seen competitors fold, the company remains a leader in the global protein transition. This progress highlights their transformation from an expensive scientific experiment into a viable, sustainable food source.

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Less meat, more plant-based. 🌱 Good for your health or for the planet? What I find striking about the debate around the new Dutch dietary guidelines is how quickly it got framed as a choice between health and sustainability. As if those two are somehow in conflict. 🤨 A healthy environment is fundamental to human health. And in the case of eating more plant-based and less meat, the benefits are clearly not ‘either/or’. They’re both. That’s why I wanted to calculate the actual impact of the new guidance from the Netherlands Nutrition Centre (Voedingscentrum). Using the Livvie Business impact calculator, we estimated the potential annual impact in the Netherlands: 🌱 3.18 million hectares less land use 💦 2.98 billion m³ less water use and pollution 🌍 11.3 million tonnes less greenhouse gas emissions 💊 28.5 tonnes less antimicrobial use These numbers are absolutely massive! 💥 It shows how small changes in food policy can have a major impact on both people and planet. ❓ Do you believe sustainability should be considered in dietary guidelines?

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What if you could program Biology like code? In this episode, Stef van Grieken (Co-founder and CEO of Cradle) shows how Cradle is re-writing the rules of biology and what it took to build one one Europe's most ambitious deep-tech startups. In this episode, Stef shares: 💡 How he's building the "Photoshop for Proteins" 🚀 The three hypothesis you need to prove to create a truely disruptive startup (feasibility, value, and monitization) 🇨🇭 What Switzerland (and Europe) must do to compete with Silicon Valley 🎧 Catch the full episode with Stef, available on our website and wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was sponsored by infinity.swiss, Switzerland’s most advanced AI accounting tool. Save 25% by entering code SWISSPRENEUR at checkout. Link in the comments! 📸 The cover portrait was edited by smartportrait. #swisspreneur, #startup, #entrepreneur, #podcast #deeptech #biotech #AIinnovation #Swisstech #properti

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No founder ever signed up for the task of fundraising - it's time consuming and difficult!!! Also you can make a lot of rookie 🤓 mistakes - the ones you can prevent from making after having been present at today's lunch talk by Hessel Hoekstra, investor at Holland Capital. 👉 Main takeaway: preparation is everything. Prepare for meetings, prepare to be ready for the next step, select the investors that match with you, ask questions abut the process, ask to talk to other companies they have invested in etc etc. "It is a full time job to raise capital". Prepare for it! If you also want to be in our trusted network of investors in LSH startups and scale-ups leave a comment below 👇 Thank you Hessel, and of course Celinha Heinrichs and Marike van Oostveen for making this possible at VU StartHub. #startup #scaleup #funding #raisingcapital

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Scaling in the EU can feel like playing a guessing game, and it's costing founders real money and momentum. 💸 Since launching our independent research at DutchBasecamp, we’ve been hearing the raw, unfiltered reality of founders hitting regulatory friction. We want to hear your story too. 👉 Fill in the survey (link in comments) or comment below if you're up for an in-depth interview to share your experience. 🇪🇺

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Another investment from fund II! We're proud to lead Ditto's € 7.6m Seed round. Patients deserve AI that's truly on their side when navigating healthcare. Ditto delivers a trusted solution

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Great insights from my colleague Merel Kraaijenbrink! I can't stress enough the first one: speed of commercial validation. European Founders are first and foremost top tech experts who want to develop a perfect product before launching it to the market. Please don't. Engage with the customers as soon as possible. Early adopters will be willing to tolerate a rough-around-the-edges product for the benefits it offers. And what you will learn from these first customers is priceless!

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Sineterra's AGS system automates indoor crop growth. Purpose: resource use reduction, labor minimization, supply reliability. Function: controlled environments drive crop yield, detach production from geography. Execution: franchise model exported to Switzerland, Japan, Singapore, Saudi Arabia. Adoption: shifts food security from open field to modular platform. Premise: less energy and labor, higher system discipline. Result: traditional agricultural volatility replaced by engineered risk zones. System asks nothing, expects output. Analytical value: efficiency hinges on hardware reliability, operator discipline, locality-specific constraints.

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At 13:00 Severin Zugmayer - Founder, New Renaissance Ventures, is joining us live on VENTURES Severin launched Europe's first dedicated VC for the cultural and creative industries, a sector worth 5.5% of the EU economy that venture has almost entirely ignored (but currently a rising tide) Formally of Speedinvest with a 16x combined MOIC, now deploying a micro-fund at the intersection of AI, spatial computing, and creativity. This is not an impact fund, it's a returns fund. See you on the show.

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Labour shortages? Sorted. Arugga AI Farming is launching 'Louie', the first greenhouse plant-lowering robot. Adopted by Lans and HarvestHouse, the largest Dutch greenhouse cooperative! Want to see the robot during Greentech, Amsterdam? Get in touch! More info here: https://lnkd.in/eB_-q6bq

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Great ideas need more than ambition, they need the right support system. For over 15 years, Rabobank and UtrechtInc have worked side by side to help science-driven startups grow with the right mix of knowledge, network and financing. Startups like CryoCloud and SPCTR show what’s possible: 🔹 CryoCloud scaled its team and technology after receiving the Rabo Innovation Loan, recently closing a €2M round 🔹 SPCTR is preparing hospital testing of its AI-powered surgical device, supported by funding and community access Through incubation, hands-on guidance and financial solutions, founders move from research and ideas → real companies with real impact. Special thanks to Jeroen Ekkel and Thijs Reiling, Startup & Scale-up bankers, Rabobank, this is what partnership looks like: connecting innovation with opportunity. Stefan Braam #UtrechtInc #Rabobank #StartupSupport #ScienceToStartup #AcademicEntrepreneurship #InnovationEcosystem #HealthTech #DeepTech #DutchStartups

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More CEA means more sustainable and safer fresh food! An interesting article appeared in Frontiers two months ago. This article confirms what recent studies by Rabobank, ABN-Amro, WUR, and others have already shown: Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is a solution to a number of challenges. CEA is synonymous with indoor horticulture and includes low, mid, and high-tech greenhouses and all forms of daylight-free cultivation. The total area of CEA worldwide is approximately 3.7 million hectares, most of which is low-tech (plastic tunnels) and by far the largest area is in China. Daylight-free cultivation (including container cultivation and vertical farming) covers less than 1,000 hectares and is therefore a niche market. According to research by WUR, growing fresh fruit and vegetables in high-tech greenhouses is already often the most sustainable cultivation method. CEA is expanding rapidly and competing with or replacing conventional agriculture for certain foods (mainly lettuce). In the near future, this is expected to make the existing production of more and more foods, mainly staple crops and meat, economically unviable in these systems. CEA systems offer environmental benefits (particularly water savings and reduced use of artificial fertilizers through recirculation and minimization of pesticide use). the carbon footprint of many systems (construction and operation) is often higher than that of conventional systems. Although CEA systems have already reached the threshold where they can begin to improve the sustainability of food production through the use of renewable energy (geothermal energy, residual heat, and much lower energy consumption), the real potential lies in the development of economically sustainable mass production of basic crops. As climate change is likely to disrupt conventional agriculture on a global scale, many regions will resort to CEA technologies to adapt to changing environmental conditions such as drought and desertification. Ultimately, CEA systems and specialized (e.g., genetically modified) crops could be developed that enable low-cost, intensive production of staple foods. To realize the sustainability benefits that CEA potentially offers, future development should focus on integrating economic and environmental aspects into system design. By integrating this research into the development phases of CEA systems, more sustainable food production will emerge in the future, which in the long term is expected to lead to more economically efficient systems, lower operating costs, more competitive food prices, and a more positive image among the general public. And for those who don't know, the Netherlands has excellent greenhouse builders, automation specialists, and cultivation expertise to make this possible. More CEA often means more work, but automation specialists such as #TTAxISO are able to tackle this issue for growers and investors. #CEA #food #agri #horticulture #sustainability

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Wall Street macro investor Jordi Visser reveals how he raised his HRV from the 20s to the 60s — and why heart rate variability, longevity, Bitcoin and AI are all connected by the same framework. In this episode we go deep on HRV and longevity, the gut-brain-vagus nerve axis, resonance frequency breathing, why muscle is upstream of biological ageing, and how to actually use your wearable data. Then we flip to macro — Bitcoin 2026, AI deflation, the private credit crisis, Strait of Hormuz oil shock, and why fiat financial rails cannot handle the speed of AI agents. Jordi Visser spent 30 years managing billions in risk on Wall Street — building turbulence models to predict market crashes before they happened. Then he turned that exact same framework on his own biology. The result? He raised his HRV dramatically — not with a protocol, but with a system. In this episode we go deep on all of it — what your wearable is really telling you, why your gut health is the foundation of your HRV, why breathwork beats meditation, and why muscle is a signal organ not just a performance tool. Then we flip to macro — why Jordi believes capitalism's 10,000-year bargain between capital and labour officially broke in 2025, why Bitcoin is the architectural blueprint for what comes next, and why AI can't survive without crypto infrastructure. This is one of the most wide-ranging, mind-expanding conversations we've ever had on Pushing The Limits.

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🤖 Digital twins (DTs) should be a practical tool in agri-food firms, not a token AI initiative. Here in Amsterdam we've had the Vertical Farming Congress, Greentech, and several other agri-food events: digital twins were a talking point on each stage. More agri-food businesses seem to be thinking about incorporating DTs as part of their AI or operational efficiency initiatives. IMHO that’s a good trend--so long as these it stays practical. In most cases, the useful starting point for a DT isn’t a full simulation or a glossy dashboard, and it probably doesn't involve buying a 6-month-old SaaS product. No ROI there. Instead, successful DT implementation does the same thing that all process optimization does: connect data that already exists (e.g., from production lines, storage systems, or field operations) to someone who can now make faster or better decisions. Once that foundation is in place, the rest just follows: data pipelines, models, visualisation, automation. The technology isn’t the bottleneck: vision, clarity and coordination are. At ADC Consulting, digital twin work involves helping teams align their information flow to their business model. We also coordinate with some highly capable IT/OT partners who handle controls and infrastructure. It’s not about building flashy tools, it’s about bringing DTs to how firms (and their people!) already work. For agri-food organisations across Europe, that’s often the simplest way to see real returns from AI: use DTs to reduce costs, increase production, or increase predictability. ADC can offer practical advice on how to get started using the same OT that you're using right now. If you want a grounded conversation on all things AI and digital twin in the agri-food space, feel free to reach out: william.h@adc-consulting.com. Or visit us at https://lnkd.in/eH3bS4_C #AI #agrifood #digitaltwin #VerticalFarmingWorldCongress #greentech2025

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Tech News of the Week: (This is for informational purposes only, and in no particular order) 1)RIFT: Backed by €113.8 million, Dutch startup RIFT to deliver 340 GWh of industrial heat annually and avoid over 1 million tonnes of CO₂. Source: https://lnkd.in/g7drDxCE 2) Mutable Tactics: Mutable Tactics Raises $2.1 Million for AI Drone Coordination in Satellite-Denied Environments. Source: https://lnkd.in/ggbZHNmR 3) Oxa: Oxa Secures $103 Million Series D First Close to Scale Autonomous Vehicles for Industrial Logistics. Source: https://lnkd.in/gxq7QXGf 4) Shellworks: Plastic Without Plastic: Shellworks’ $15 Million Bet on Microbe-Made Packaging. Source: https://lnkd.in/g-U3-HDZ 5) Alithea Genomics: Alithea Genomics Lands $8.9 Million to Cut Cost and Time of RNA Sequencing. Source: https://lnkd.in/gPTUSRRm 6) ROXFIT: ROXFIT Lands £1.9 Million to Build AI Training Platform for HYROX Athletes. Source: https://lnkd.in/gBdgMYse 7) Diligent AI: Can AI Save Compliance Teams? Diligent AI Raises $2.5 Million to Find Out. Source: https://lnkd.in/gfZsMK8t 8) Eight Sleep: Eight Sleep Reaches a $1.5 Billion Valuation, with Tether Backing Their Bet on Predictive Sleep AI. Source: https://lnkd.in/gTAwJ9eu 9) PLD Space: PLD Space Raises €180 Million Series C to Scale Europe’s Commercial Launch Capabilities. Source: https://lnkd.in/gezpQ2y4 10) GHARAGE: GHARAGE Spins Out €40 Million Fund for Travel Tech Across Europe and Asia. Source: https://lnkd.in/g5v5P8vZ X: https://lnkd.in/gg7x5hxu

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