Apeel bites into another $250M funding round, at a $2B valuation, to accelerate fresh food supply chains

Published August 18, 2021

Apeel Sciences, a food system innovation company, is out to prevent food produced globally from ending up in the landfill, especially as pressures from the global pandemic affect the food supply chain.

The company just added $250 million in Series E funding, giving it a valuation of $2 billion, to speed up the availability of its longer-lasting produce in the U.S. (where approximately 40% of food is wasted), the U.K. and Europe.

Existing investor Temasek led the round and was joined by a group of new and existing investors, including Mirae Asset Global Investments, GIC, Viking Global Investors, Disruptive, Andreessen Horowitz, Tenere Capital, Sweetwater Private Equity, Tao Capital Partners, K3 Ventures, David Barber of Almanac Insights, Michael Ovitz of Creative Artists Agency, Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, Susan Wojcicki of YouTube and Katy Perry.

With the new funding, Apeel has now raised over $635 million since the company was founded in 2012. Prior to this round, the company brought in $250 million in Series D funding in May 2020.

Preventing food waste nets Apeel $250 million from Singapore’s government, Oprah and Katy Perry

Santa Barbara-based Apeel developed a plant-based layer for the surface of fruits and vegetables that is tasteless and odorless and that keeps moisture in while letting oxygen out. It is those two factors in particular that lead to grocery produce lasting twice as long, James Rogers, CEO of Apeel, told TechCrunch.

Apeel installs its application at the supplier facilities where the produce is packed into boxes. In addition to that technology, the company acquired ImpactVision earlier this year to add another layer of quality by integrating imaging systems on individual pieces as they move through the supply chain to optimize routing so more produce that is grown is eaten.

“One in nine people are going hungry, and if three in nine pieces of produce are being thrown away, we can be better stewards of the food we are throwing away,” Rogers said. “This is a solvable problem, we just have to get the pieces to the right place at the right time.”

The company is not alone in tackling food waste. For example, Shelf Engine, Imperfect Foods, Mori and Phood Solutions are all working to improve the food supply chain and have attracted venture dollars to go after that mission.

Prior to the pandemic, the amount of food people were eating was growing each year, but that trend is reversed, Rogers explained. Consumers are more aware of the food they eat, they are shopping less frequently, buying more per visit and more online. At the same time, grocery stores are trying to sort through all of that.

“We can’t create these supply networks alone, we do it in concert with supply and retail partners,” he said. “Grocery stores are looking at the way shoppers want to buy things, while we look at how to partner to empower the supply chain. What started with longer-lasting fruits and vegetables, is becoming how we provide information to empower them to do it without adding to food waste.”

Since 2019, Apeel has prevented 42 million pieces of fruit from going to waste at retail locations; that includes up to 50% reduction in avocado food waste with corresponding sales growth. Those 42 million pieces of saved fruit also helped conserve nearly 4.7 billion liters of water, Rogers said.

Meanwhile, over the past year, Apeel has amassed a presence in eight countries, operating 30 supply networks and distributing produce to 40 retail partners, which then goes out to tens of thousands of stores around the world.

The new funding will accelerate the rollout of those systems, as well as co-create another 10 supply networks with retail and supply partnerships by the end of the year. Rogers also expects to use the funding to advance Apeel’s data and insights offerings and future acquisitions.

Thomas Park, president and head of alternative investments at Mirae Asset Global Investments, said his firm has been investing in environmental, social and governance-related companies for awhile, targeting companies that “make a huge impact globally and in a way that is easy for us to understand.”

The firm, which is part of Mirae Asset Financial Group, often partners with other investors on venture rounds, and in Apeel’s case with Temasek. It also invested with Temasek in Impossible Foods, leading its Series F round last year.

“When we saw them double-down on their investment, it gave us confidence to invest in Apeel and an opportunity to do so,” Park said. “Food waste is a global problem, and after listening to James, we definitely feel like Apeel is the next wave of how to attack these huge problems in an impactful way.”

IoT and data science will boost foodtech in the post-pandemic era

Lidar startup Ouster raises $42M in push to grow sales, diversify products

Published September 8, 2020

Lidar startup Ouster has spent the past several years expanding and improving its line of sensors as it jostles for a piece of the crowded and competitive market place. Now, Ouster says it has raised $42 million, fresh capital that will be used to fund product development and ramp up sales.

In short: Ouster is keeping the fight alive and there are signs that the San Francisco-based startup is making progress despite some headwinds. The $42 million Series B round didn’t feature any new investors — existing backers Cox Automotive, Fontinalis Partners and Tao Capital Partners all participated — and it was less than its previous raise of $60 million. Ouster, like many others, also reduced its workforce by 10% due to COVID-19, the company confirmed.

However, it’s worth noting that Ouster managed to close the round in the midst of COVID-19 and has continued to increase sales, even as its San Francisco-based manufacturing facility was shuttered temporarily due to a COVID-related government shutdown. The business grew enough to avoid further layoffs and to fully pay all employees and temp workers, according to the company. Ouster has raised $140 million to date.

Ouster wouldn’t share specific revenue numbers, but the company said its 12-month revenue has grown 62%, with third-quarter bookings up 209% year-over-year — a stat that makes sense, considering its business model and the expansion of its product line.

Lidar measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D maps of the world around the car. Lidar is considered by most in the automated vehicle technology industry a key sensor required to safely deploy robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles (with perhaps the exception of Elon Musk and a few others).

Ouster is taking a different technological and business approach than many of its competitors.

The company’s lasers and photodetectors are printed onto two chips using a standard process to produce integrated circuits (known as CMOS to those in the know). Ouster says this allows it to ditch the more common practice of stacking discrete components on top of each other to reach the desired resolution. Ouster argues that its approach results in a less complex sensor that is more reliable and cheaper.

“Ouster’s digital lidar architecture gives us fundamental advantages that are winning over customers in every market we serve. Digital CMOS technology is the future of lidar and Ouster was the first to invent, build, patent, and commercialize digital lidar. Once our customers experience the resolution and reliability of these sensors at an affordable price, there’s no turning back to legacy analog lidar,” Ouster CEO Angus Pacala said in a statement.

In January, Ouster launched its second-generation lidar product line, which includes three different 128-beam sensors to be used for different purposes, including one designed for navigating urban environments and warehouses. The other two sensors include a mid-range model with a 120-meter range and a 45-degree field of view, and a long-range lidar sensor with a more than 200-meter range for high-speed vehicle automation. All three products are currently shipping to customers and are available in 50 different configurations, according to Ouster.

The company’s business model is also slightly different than many others. Instead of targeting automakers or companies trying to commercialize robotaxis, Ouster has cast a wider net to diversify its business. The company is selling its lidar sensors to robotics, drones, mapping, defense, building security, mining and agriculture companies. The company launched in January its second-generation lidar sensors, which included three new 128-beam models that have different applications. The second-generation line is an improvement from its previous 64-beam models, with better resolution.

The strategy has appeared to pay off. Ouster has doubled its customer base since March 2019, according to the company. Today, Ouster says it has 800 customers across 15 markets, including Konecranes, Postmates, Ike, May Mobility, Kodiak Robotics, Coast Autonomous, the U.S. Army, NASA, Stanford University and MIT. Some of that growth has come from sales to Chinese automation companies such as idriverplus, WhaleAI, Hongjing Drive and qCraft.

Despite the growth, Ouster needs the capital to scale, as designing, manufacturing and selling lidar sensors is an expensive undertaking. Ouster has opened offices in Paris, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Hong Kong and Suzhou to expand global sales and customer service capabilities. It also has two manufacturing facilities. Its San Francisco facility, which opened in March 2019, is primarily used to introduce new products. Production volumes are lower at this facility. Once the product is validated, they’re transferred to Ouster’s contract manufacturer Benchmark in Southeast Asia.

Benchmark is now producing hundreds to thousands of second-generation sensors per month, according to Ouster.

Activ Surgical raises $15 million to advance autonomous and collaborative robotic surgery

Published July 16, 2020

Boston-based startup Activ Surgical has raised a $15 million round of venture funding led by ARTIS Ventures, and including participation from LRVHealth, DNS Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, Tao Capital Partners and Rising Tide VC. The round will help Activ continue to develop and expand availability of its software platform, which it launched to market in May.

Activ Surgical’s ActivEdge platform uses data collected from surgical implements outfitted with sensors created by the company to collect real-time data during the actual surgical process. That data is then used to inform the development of machine learning and AI-based visualizations that can provide guidance to surgeons and surgical systems to help them reduce the occurrence of potential errors, and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.

The company’s primary aim is to bring technological innovation to the sphere of surgical vision, which still relies primarily on methods like using fluorescent dyes that date back more than 70 years. Activ wants to use computer vision to provide real-time visual insight into things that surgeons wouldn’t be able to see on their own — and ultimately to use those insights to power the next generation of both collaborative surgical robots and eventually even fully autonomous robotic surgical procedures.

ActivSight is the company’s first product in its ActivEdge platform offering, and is a small, connected imaging coddle that can be attached to existing laparoscopic and arthroscopic surgical instruments. The company is currently tracking toward getting their hardware cleared by the FDA for use by Q4 this year, and are working with eight hospital partners for pilot projects in the U.S.

The company has raised a total of $32 million in funding to date.