Food Tech Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2025

GrubMarket is the AI-powered technology enabler and digital transformer of American Food Supply Chain industry. Our mission is to build and provide the eCommerce and software technologies to this industry, to transform this completely offline and highly manual industry into modernized online industry powered by software technologies, and improve the efficiency of American food supply chain.

OctaPulse uses AI vision to automate hatchery QA for fish farms, starting with broodstock phenotyping and juvenile deformity inspection. We cut inspection time from about 5 minutes to under 30 seconds per fish, with more than 90 percent accuracy, so farms advance only high quality fish and waste less feed and labor. Our goal is to bring automation across the entire fish production lifecycle for the $300B aquaculture industry. Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector, and has already surpassed commercial fishing for production of seafood. Yet two of the most critical QA and QC steps in fish production are still done by hand: phenotyping and deformity inspection. These processes are slow, error prone, and despised by technicians but vital for the success of the farm, so much so that farms spend >$200K a year on trained technicians and geneticists to operate. We’ve built an AI vision platform for vertically integrated finfish farms that drops into existing workflows starting in the hatchery, uses off the shelf cameras, standardizes these QA steps, and creates a proprietary multi species dataset that becomes the brain for future autonomous aquafarms. Phenotyping is the start, but the platform is designed to be a drop in solution that can easily expand into feeding, health monitoring, and processing so we can solve production problems across the lifecycle. We signed a 6-figure paid pilot with the largest trout producer in the United States, are deploying into 2 more farms early 2026, and trained models above 90 percent accuracy while cutting inspection time from 5 minutes to under 30 seconds. Each deployment adds labeled images to our dataset and improves cross species generalization.

Food Supply Chain companies have been using legacy ERPs for decades. Everyone knows these are necessary evils that essentially run the business but take up a lot of operational capacity. They are not about to just rip and replace their existing system that runs their whole business with a system that takes years to implement. Imagine if they could implement AI that runs the ERP for them, in weeks? Burnt’s building an agentic OS for the Food Supply Chain with AI Agents for each department. Our AI Agent, Ozai, has started by replacing the whole order management job function at food distribution companies, so that sales and customer service teams can focus on what matters - the customer. Ozai monitors all incoming messages (emails, phone calls, voicemails, whatsapp, fax etc.), figures out if it's an order, learns each customer's habits, shorthand, and favorite products, picks up on any prep notes, and enters it straight into the existing ERP. It'll even go back to the customers on your behalf when it's not sure about something, clarify things and carry on working. The more it sees, the smarter it gets.

Founded in 2022, Polo is the ecosystem for coffee shops and restaurants in LatAm to run on. We design, build, and sell with our customer experience and reality in mind. This commitment has driven us to truly innovate, saving our customers from outrageous third-party costs and week-long lead times. We offer point of sale, inventory management, and more to our growing community of entrepreneur and experienced restaurateurs. Our tech is as user-friendly as an iPhone, yet powerful enough to power Starbucks. PoloTab is led by a team driven by the vision that things should be different, with the skills to make it happen. We were born from the food & beverage industry and are here to make a difference, not merely be part of the crowd.

Superorder enables restaurant chains to build customer loyalty, enhance operational efficiency, and maximize profitability. Superorder has a robust network of restaurant partners that include Marco's Pizza, KFC, Pizza Hut, Wow Bao, and Del Taco.

ALT TEX is a Toronto-based biomaterials startup that has developed the world’s first biodegradable and carbon neutral fabric, engineered from the world’s largest landfill contributor - food waste. Polyester alone makes up 60% of the $2.5 trillion fashion industry and is the biggest blocker preventing brands from meeting sustainability mandates. The patent-pending ALT TEX fermentation technology creates a polyester alternative that works with the existing infrastructure to supply a sustainable, high performance and cost competitive polyester replacement to fashion brands, at scale. The product solves key problems for fashion brands, consumers, and the environment: (1) Fashion brands: ALT TEX sells fabric to fashion brands, allowing them to differentiate via sustainable options (sustainable fashion growing 11% CAGR) and hit sustainability targets, without sacrificing performance or changing their current supply chain. (2) Consumer: The ALT TEX fabric is projected to be half the price vs. other specialized sustainable alternatives (due to low-cost input and scalability), meaning greater accessibility. (3) Environment: A single shirt produced with ALT TEX fabric can divert 1 kg of food waste from landfills, 9 kg of carbon emissions from the air, and 4 g of micro-plastics from our waterways. Co-founders Myra and Avneet have worked together managing teams and projects for six years, with backgrounds in serial entrepreneurship, corporate sales at Fortune 500 companies, textile manufacturing and biochemistry. To date, ALT TEX has created their first fabric prototype that’s 70% stronger than cotton, secured $1M in LOIs and raised $2.3M.

Hedgehog builds robotic mushroom farms. Our robots eliminate labor and our AI optimizes grow conditions to increase yield. We’ll soon grow mushrooms and fungi for <1/3rd the cost of leading growers. Fungi may address our food system’s biggest problems: they transform agricultural waste into protein-rich foods with near-zero environmental impact. Hedgehog’s technology is unleashing fungi as our next major food source.

FoodCourt (CoKitchen) is Africa's leading virtual restaurant company. We've served over 350,000 meals in the last 12 months & our goal is to make good food and quick convenience goods more accessible across Africa, through virtual restaurants & dark stores. Understanding the unique problems of the African on-demand/ food delivery market, we've taken a full-stack approach by controlling different areas of the value chain such as technology, production & delivery to give users a seamless & consistent experience while giving us unlimited flexibility for growth. Learn more at www.getfoodcourt.com or email henry@cokitchen.ng

Boostly provides everything necessary for restaurants to attract new guests and turn them into regulars. From AI-powered SEO, paid ads, behavioral-based text marketing with gamified engagement, and AI driven reputation management, Boostly provides 10x greater guest engagement when compared to others in the industry. Boostly’s patented processes enables them to build opted-in subscriber lists bigger and faster than anyone on the market.

Kaso (formerly Elkaso) is the largest B2B ordering platform for restaurants and suppliers in the Middle East. Kaso connects restaurants and suppliers, to manage and improve the order process end to end to save time, money, and food.

Offbeast is on a mission to bring bold, crave-worthy plant-based steaks to the plate. Our products are made with our proprietary manufacturing platform that creates plant-based meats with an unprecedented authentic texture at scale. More than 85% of our customers agree that Offbeast products have the best texture they've ever had in a plant-based meat product.

Attain is a one-stop shop for convenience store owners to buy inventory across all their suppliers with higher reliability, price transparency, and product discovery. On average, store owners buy products from over 10-15 different suppliers each week. This painful process involves shopping in massive warehouses or spending hours working with wholesaler’s sales representatives (who sometimes don’t even show up). As a result, stores waste countless hours ordering products through extremely inefficient and tedious processes. These store owners are also severely impacted by inventory shortages and revenue loss which many times results in them downsizing their business or shutting them down completely. Attain solves this problem by providing a single app to purchase products across all of their suppliers, resulting in a one-stop shop for inventory. By aggregating inventory across a multitude of suppliers and wholesalers, Attain helps stores save significant time and money while allowing them to focus on what they do best - growing their businesses. Feel free to reach out at founders@joinattain.com!

1.2B lbs of fish are caught everyday yet as little as 1 in 3 fish make it to a plate — most of this waste arises because fish are suffocated on boats or electrocuted on farms. Suffocation and inaccurate electrocution create stress and so acidify meat, damage quality and significantly reduce shelf-life. Artisanal techniques in high-end sushi multiply shelf-life and taste but, because of the variation in fish, are difficult to perform in a mechanical fashion. Shinkei automates traditional techniques using robotics to provide long-lasting and delicious fish for farmers and harvesters at scale.

Brown Foods is a Stanford, Rice University and IIT Delhi alumni venture building the next-generation of food products. They are creating UnReal Milk- lab based, clean milk - extremely sustainable 'real milk' but made without any cows. Unlike any other option in the USD 22 billion dairy alternatives market today, it will be exactly similar to cow’s milk in terms of nutritional profile, taste, texture and could also be processed into butter, cheese and ice creams. They envision to disrupt the USD 700 billion conventional dairy market by giving the world its 1st 'cow free' real milk option, reducing the carbon footprint of milk by over 90% while being completely cruelty-free.

beU delivery is an on-demand food delivery service in Africa. We offer a great selection of local restaurants and door-to-door food delivery that allows the customer to have their favorite food from the comfort of their home or office. We are the #1 food delivery service in Ethiopia, deliver at significantly cheaper rate than our peers, making food delivery affordable for the mass. We plan to expand our services to new markets and eventually become the super app of Africa.

Kiwi Biosciences can help 18M Americans suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) enjoy a normal meal without running to the bathroom two hours later. We develop novel, patent-pending enzymes that break down common digestive triggers in food.

We’re on a mission to help restaurants go direct-to-consumer. With Tablevibe, eateries can easily launch their own online ordering system and sell directly to dine-in, pickup, and delivery customers through a branded webshop. Our platform connects seamlessly with leading logistics partners like Uber, Doordash, Grab, Foodpanda, and Lalamove to automatically book drivers at low, distance-based rates. Restaurants typically save up to 80% on delivery costs while building their own customer database and brand loyalty. Beyond ordering, we’re creating an ecosystem around digital commerce, helping restaurants grow through customer insights, cashback and referral programs, and marketing campaigns. Our unified dashboard simplifies menu and order management, while our feedback tools drive higher customer satisfaction and online reviews. Backed by Global Founders Capital, Y Combinator, and Velocity Ventures, Tablevibe empowers restaurants to take control of their digital future. Join thousands of thriving partners by booking a call with one of our experts at tablevibe.co/democall or by reaching out via hello@tablevibe.co.

Voosh is a Food Technology company aiming to empower Food Service brands using our proprietary visualisation tools and Data Science. One stop visualisation tool for CXOs, Operational heads or Zonal managers to get business insights and take real time decisions to help grow online sales.

OlaClick makes it easy for mass market restaurants in Latam to create a digital menu, promote it instantly with only one click and start receiving simple food orders though WhatsApp. We have +40000 restaurants in Latam and we increase their sales by 40%. contact: founders@olaclick.com

With the mission of improving people's lives in LATAM by enabling pre-made food access to millions of people, TodosComemos is pushing forward the actual barriers of the industry in LATAM by: 1. Developing pre-made and ready-to-eat healthy food above-edge technologies for the region, 2. Enabling established products and brands of prepared food to go from 1 to 1000, offering them a competitive distribution one-stop solution to reach millions of new customers in a multichannel strategy 3. Building the first pre-made food subscription service including both pre-made and ready-to-eat meals for all needs.

Kingdom creates and sells Superculture® ingredients. Our Superculture® ingredients are an entirely new class of clinically-validated postbiotics that target the root causes of unmet pet health needs. Superculture® Pet Oral and Superculture® Pet Immune are our first two breakthrough ingredients, driving industry-leading efficacy and unlocking new marketing claims for brands.

Nobell Foods is creating cheese and other dairy products from plant-derived dairy proteins for the 99% of people who are unwilling to compromise on taste and price.

Last-mile delivery for perishables.

Skio ($25M+ ARR & profitable, $8M seed, 70+ teammates) is subscription management software for brands on Shopify. Customers include Liquid I.V., Milk Bar, Polaroid, Barstool, Unilever, KraveBeauty, Boba Tea Protein, & Siete.

At Shef, we’re bringing humanity back to mealtime by connecting consumers with talented chefs in their community. By introducing the sharing economy to the dinner table, we create meaningful economic opportunities for chefs while making homemade meals more accessible and affordable. Shefs on the platform craft menus inspired by their passion and expertise, preparing meals in small batches and delivering them to your door—so you can enjoy the warmth of a homemade meal without the hassle. We have raised over $100M from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Craft Ventures, and M13, as well as founders and executives from Instacart, TaskRabbit, StubHub, AngelList, Lyft, Airbnb, and Yelp.

Eclipse Foods is building the future of dairy using micelles (the microscopic magic of milk.) Eclipse has developed the world's first plant-based dairy platform which makes plant-based products with the taste, texture, and functionality of conventional dairy. We are transforming the $500B dairy industry and have raised over $60M from leading investors such as Y Combinator, the chairman of Beyond Meat, the founder of Reddit, the creator of Gmail, Forerunner Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Initialized Capital, and more. Our mission is to create a more sustainable, healthy, and humane food system by making plant-based foods that require no sacrifice.

Mission: Better food for more people. We accomplish this mission by putting farms inside restaurants, so everyone gets healthier food. Our food has 50% more nutrition and flavor, and our customers increase their lifespan by 5 years.

The Insect Farming Company. We’re developing the world’s most efficient and sustainable way to produce protein. Insects are rich in protein and are a natural component of the diets of many fish and free-range poultry. Our technology is significantly more efficient at producing protein than traditional methods of production as our insects are vertically farmed and not restricted to floor space or area. Thanks to our automated system we can produce at industrial scale and offer farmers a cost-effective and sustainable alternative to soymeal and fishmeal.

The Essential is e-commerce 2.0. What we do We make and sell the single best version of all your essentials, at the best price possible. How we do it We're not an "everything store."We sell only the essentials, we're members-only and we only sell our own brand. We cut out the middlemen, the brands, the physical stores and the markups — to make products cost a lot less, all while paying the producer more. Why we do it To add meaning to people’s lives through products they use and love, made by people who know and care, with stories that matter, and means that are honest.

We waste 3X more food than there are hungry mouths to feed. It is not a lack of food that's the issue, but rather an ineffective distribution of that food. Hunger is not a scarcity problem; it's a logistics problem. For the first time ever, we can effectively donate prepared and highly perishable food to those who need it when we need it most. Copia is a for-profit company that has built technology allowing businesses (e.g., food management companies like Compass Group, corporate cafeterias, universities, hospitals, grocers, caterers, etc.) to easily request pickups of their surplus food, have it matched, and safely delivered to non-profits in need. With Copia, partnering businesses can seamlessly access significant tax savings, dramatically reduce food waste through data and analytics on surplus, and remove CO2 from the atmosphere, all while feeding their community. We have diverted over 7M pounds of edible food from landfills and provided businesses and nonprofits with over $23M in savings. We will feed over 7M people with incredible food that would have otherwise been wasted!

Intro to Orbillion Bio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAf21WXxnhw (Slush Nov 2024) Orbillion is making cultivated beef at scale using advanced computational models to rapidly optimize the bioprocess and reduce cost. With Orbillion’s proprietary bioware, they can precisely control the microenvironment that the meat cells need. This supercharges cell growth without the need for GMO, serum, or expensive growth factors, enabling a cost of $4 per kg at commercial scale. Orbillion’s technology addresses the industry's two main challenges: cost and scale-up. Its integrated bioprocess platform allows Orbillion to produce at a commercial level anywhere globally within two weeks in an asset-light fashion. Partnerships with two global food companies of combined $280B revenue, and a European partner have fast-tracked commercialization in the $211B ground beef market. Founders Dr. Patricia Bubner and Samet Yildirim are the only industry founders with scale-up experience in mammalian cells from the biopharma industry. Orbillion is backed by The Venture Collective, Y Combinator, At One Ventures, Venture Souq, and Hub71 among others.

We build software to help restaurants manage their third-party delivery online orders.

Goodybag helps you find catering for your office. Easily search restaurants and have food delivered to your next meeting. For Restaurants and Caterers: Goodybag lists your catering menu with no startup or monthly fees. You set your own delivery fees and zones. For Businesses: Goodybag is an easy, time-saving way for you to explore and order food from restaurants around town for your employees.

MobyDish, a tech-enabled service, allowing anyone to place a catering order online in less than 3min to feed people from 10 to 1,000 people. We select the best restaurants, hire and train our fleet of drivers who will deliver and setup and we're proud to have the best customer service in the space. We also offer on site catering host and premium service that can be requested in up to 48hours in advance. We own our tech from online ordering, to manage and dispatch orders to drivers, and build customer relationship. We're used by top companies in the biggest cities in the US and we help for our customers with any needs from breakfast, lunch, happy hour and dinner. We are known for our flexibility, reliability and provide recurring and last-minute catering orders.

Rosa Foods, maker of Soylent and Coffiest, is a pioneer in food technology, delivering nutritionally-complete staple meals that provide all the essential nutrients required to fuel the human body. Rosa Foods believes in managing the Company and the product by never being complacent and staying on the cutting edge of food technology and nutrition. Working at Rosa Foods you’ll have a platform to build cool things that positively affect the world with fun and dedicated people. Rosa Foods products are produced with sustainability and efficiency in mind to create a convenient, nutritious, and affordable meal that is better for our health and the environment. We also have raised over $75M in funding from Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Lerer Ventures, and Y-Combinator. This enables us to offer the benefits of a larger organization while still maintaining the best qualities of a startup. You’ll be able to help grow our small creative team and contribute your ideas to build this exciting brand. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.

Caviar delivers the best restaurants. We partner directly with restaurants to bring food to customers across the country — whether dining for one or 100. Customers can order ahead on the web, or instantly from the Caviar app for iOS and Android. Caviar is part of Square’s full suite of tools for businesses, enabling restaurants across the country to reach more customers, grow sales and expand reach. We deliver from the best restaurants in Boston, Brooklyn & Queens, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Manhattan, Philadelphia & Greater Philadelphia, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco Bay Area (including East Bay, Peninsula, Marin & South Bay), and Washington D.C.