December 2025
Season’s Greetings from Rethink Food!
As we approach the close of 2025, we want to take a moment to share what we have been focused on this past quarter, what we’re seeing in the market, and where we’re leaning in as we look toward 2026.
The Next Frontier: AI Moves from Bits to Atoms
AI has already reshaped the map of digital industries. Now it is beginning to transform the physical world—where food, agriculture, manufacturing, and supply chains operate. In the second half of the year, we sharpened our conviction that the most meaningful FoodTech outcomes over the next decade will be driven by companies embedding intelligence directly into real-world systems, not simply building software layers around them.
Three forces are converging to make this shift both inevitable and investable:
Global Resource Pressure
Food systems are being asked to produce more with less—less land, less water, fewer inputs, fewer emissions. Climate volatility and structural supply constraints are pushing operators toward tools that can deliver measurable efficiency gains.
Technological Maturity
What was once experimental is now deployable. Sensors, robotics, edge compute, vision models, and agentic AI have reached the level of robustness needed to operate in dynamic, unpredictable environments. This unlocks entirely new categories of automation and decision-making.
Labor and Cost Dynamics
Persistent labor shortages and rising operational costs are accelerating demand for solutions that deliver clear ROI and drive adoption of automation.
Together, these forces point toward a new phase of innovation—one in which AI becomes deeply integrated into physical workflows. We see this playing out across three domains that align directly with our thesis:
- Agriculture & Discovery: precision tools, autonomous systems, and AI-driven biological discovery platforms are advancing yield, resilience, and input efficiency, enabling farmers and scientists to respond to climate and resource constraints with unprecedented precision.
- Supply Chain & Logistics: AI-native forecasting, routing, and fulfillment systems are turning previously fragmented processes into integrated networks with compounding data advantages. This is especially pivotal in food systems, where spoilage, timing, and distribution complexity are acute.
- Nutrition & Health: personalized, AI-enabled consumer interfaces making “Food as Medicine” more actionable. From insights-driven product development to individualized nutrition guidance, intelligence is beginning to close the gap between consumer intent and health outcomes at scale.
At Rethink Food, we’ve been ahead of the AI curve—over 66% of our portfolio is built on AI.[1]
Next Investments
During the second half of 2025, we made two key investments. These companies are already off to the races and producing results.
Fulfil now has its autonomous micro-fulfillment robots live inside a Whole Foods store. They’re touting ~10-minute, near-perfect order packing across ambient, chilled, and frozen—making online grocery economics look finally fixable.
SuperCircle uses AI to sort garments and route each one to the best reuse or fiber-to-fiber recycling outcome, turning returns and excess inventory into recovered value while diverting textiles from landfill.
RTE Fund I Portfolio Highlights
Agtonomy lands major OEM deals to scale autonomy 🚜🤝
Agtonomy is locking in the partnerships that matter: commercial OEM agreements with Kubota and Bobcat now put its autonomy stack directly into the hands of two of the most important equipment players in ag.
Brightseed doubles down on bioactives with two commercial launches 🌿🧬
Brightseed sustained strong commercial momentum with two products now in market: Bio Gut Core™ for clinically validated digestive health, and BioMetaControl™ for metabolic support as a nature-inspired “GLP-1 companion.” Together they show Forager AI translating into real products, not just platform promise.
Counter Service expands to 4 NYC locations 🥪📍
New Yorkers are loving Counter Service’s delicious sandwiches. The team is up to four locations, and the brand’s chef-driven sandwich concept is consistently selling out. Don’t wait, get your Counter Service sandwich today!
Phytoform partners with Corteva to advance disease-resistant corn 🌽🤝
Phytoform signed a collaboration with Corteva to apply its CRE.AI.TIVE™ AI + gene-editing platform to boost native disease resistance in corn by optimizing DNA control regions. It’s a high-signal validation that their tech can jump from specialty crops into major row crops.
FoodHealth Co. makes nutrition a decision-grade retail metric 🛒📊
FoodHealth Co. partnered with NielsenIQ to integrate the FoodHealth Score into NIQ’s retail-data platform, turning nutrition into an actionable metric for brands and retailers. They capped this with the first Health of America’s Grocery Carts report, analyzing 200B+ purchases and showing the average basket at ~49/100, far below the ideal average basket FHS of 88/100.
Crisp scales fast through acquisitions and a new AI agent layer 🤖📈
Crisp went on a 2025 acquisition run—Shelf Engine, Atheon, ClearBox, and Cantactix—to expand globally and deepen its retail/CPG data stack. It capped the year by launching Retail AI Agent Studio and landing at #52 on the Inc. 5000.
Harmony Baby Nutrition lands $5.8M Brazil grant for hypoallergenic formula 👶🇧🇷
This $5.8M non-dilutive award from the Brazilian government is the largest grant ever awarded by the Finep (Brazilian Innovation Agency). It will help fund a new local R&D hub and fast-track Harmony’s breast-milk-inspired, hypoallergenic infant formula toward commercialization.
Team Updates
Julia Pasek joined the team in September as Rethink Food’s Senior Associate and moved to New York with her dog, Indie.
We held our second AGM this October in NYC.
Rini joined the International Women’s Forum (IWF), a membership of female business leaders.
Looking Ahead to 2026
We’ll be at the following events:
- World Economic Forum Annual Meeting — January 19–23, 2026, Davos, Switzerland
- iConnections Global Alts Miami 2026 — February 23–26, 2026, Miami
- SuperReturn North America — March 16–18, 2026, Miami
- World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit — March 18–19, 2026, San Francisco
We’re grateful for your partnership and the trust you place in us. As always, reach out anytime—we love talking about where this system is headed and what we’re building toward together.
Wishing you and your loved ones a warm, restorative, and healthy holiday season. ✨
Warmly,
Rini and Brad
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