GFI Europe published its half-year investment analysis on 27 August 2026. Europe’s alternative protein companies raised €236 million in private investment in the first six months of 2026, a 56% increase on the same period in 2025. The trade coverage that followed led on the rebound and on fermentation’s share of it.
Four paragraphs into the same post is the number that reframes it. Global funding fell from €341 million in H1 2025 to €306 million in H1 2026, and European startups took “more than three-quarters” of the smaller total.
Both figures are published. Neither post subtracts one from the other. When you do, the European recovery turns out to be arithmetically inseparable from a collapse everywhere else.
Methodology, and what these numbers are
This piece rests on one dataset, so its limits matter more than usual.
GFI analyses deals recorded by Net Zero Insights against a custom list of companies whose core business is alternative protein, or which supply ingredients, inputs and equipment to those producers. Companies involved in the space but not as their main business are excluded — GFI names Kerry and Merck KGaA as examples, on the grounds that the share of their spending devoted to alternative proteins is undisclosed. Companies working across platforms are assigned to whichever they are most involved in, and firms using precision fermentation to make inputs for cultivated meat are counted as fermentation, not cultivated.
Two further constraints shape everything below. Net Zero Insights “primarily tracks deals from publicly disclosed sources unless companies claim their profiles on the platform,” which GFI says makes its aggregates “conservative estimates.” And GFI warns that recently published figures may differ from ones it published earlier, because the dataset and reporting methodology are revised over time. These are not back-comparable series in the way a price index is.
All euro-to-dollar conversions in the GFI post are stated to use H1 2026’s average exchange rate of 0.8599. That claim does not hold across the whole post; the last section of this article works through where it breaks.
Every figure below is GFI’s or its named sources’. Figures we derived are labelled as ours.
The subtraction nobody published
GFI gives the European total, the global total, and the year-on-year change for Europe. That is enough to recover the rest.
If €236 million is 56% up on H1 2025, then Europe raised roughly €151 million in H1 2025 — our arithmetic, €236m ÷ 1.56. Subtracting from the published global totals gives the non-European remainder.
| H1 2025 | H1 2026 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Europe (private investment) | €151m (derived) | €236m (published) | +56% (published) |
| Rest of world | €190m (derived) | €70m (derived) | −63% (derived) |
| Global total | €341m (published) | €306m (published) | −10% (derived) |
| Europe’s share of global | 44% (derived) | 77% (derived) | +33pp (derived) |
The derived figures are only as good as the rounded 56%. We tested that: across the plausible range for a figure printed as 56% — 55.5% to 56.5% — the implied European H1 2025 total moves between €150.8m and €151.8m, and the rest-of-world decline stays between 63.0% and 63.2%. The finding does not depend on the rounding.
So the sector’s global funding fell about 10% year on year, and every euro of Europe’s rise — and then some — came out of a non-European base that dropped by roughly two thirds. Europe did not out-grow the market. The market shrank around a European core that held.
GFI’s own phrasing is accurate and does not oversell: “this was a larger slice of a smaller pie.” The framing loss happens downstream, where the 56% travels and the €306m does not.
Practical consequence: a regional funding total is a share statement disguised as a growth statement. Before treating a percentage rise in one geography as sector recovery, find the global denominator in the same release. If the release does not publish one, the percentage cannot tell you whether the sector grew.
What “private investment” includes, and what it leaves out
The €236m headline is described as private investment. GFI’s published methodology defines that precisely, and the definition is not what most readers will assume.
Deal types counted as private company investments include: accelerator/incubator, angel, bridge, convertible note, corporate, crowdfunding, debt, debt crowdfunding, early VC, equity crowdfunding, equity round, growth equity, late VC, pre-seed, private equity, private placement, product crowdfunding, seed, series A through H.
Deal types counted as other financing, and therefore outside that total: award/prize, grant, in-kind services, spinoff/spinout, unclassified.
Investments into a company after it has completed an IPO or a SPAC merger are categorised separately again, as public company investments.
Three consequences follow, and they are not symmetrical.
Debt is inside the “private investment” figure. Grants are outside it. And the identity of the lender is not a criterion — the classification runs on instrument type, not on whether the money is public or private in origin. A state development bank writing a loan lands in the same bucket as a venture fund writing a cheque.
Vivici: one announcement, split across the boundary
On 17 June 2026 Vivici was awarded €12.5 million through the European Innovation Council Accelerator Programme. AgFunderNews reports the blended financing as €2.5 million in grant funding with €10 million in equity investment.
That is one award, from one EU instrument, on one day. Under the published rules the €10 million equity portion is an equity round into a private company and belongs inside the €236m; the €2.5 million grant is “other financing” and does not. The split is not between public and private money — it is entirely public money — but between two instruments.
This is the same boundary we found running through two French rounds in August, where headline round sizes bundled Bpifrance support with equity without saying which instrument the state money took. GFI’s dataset resolves that ambiguity by instrument, which is defensible and consistent. It also means “private investment” is a statement about deal structure, not about who provided the capital.
Practical consequence: when a fermentation company’s round includes an EIC, Bpifrance or national-agency component, ask which instrument it took before assuming it does or does not appear in sector private-investment totals. Equity from a public body counts as private investment; a grant from the same body, in the same announcement, does not.
Solar Foods: the largest package sits outside the number entirely
GFI cites Solar Foods’ Business Finland package as its lead example of blended finance. The company’s own release, dated 17 June 2026, is more specific than the summary: EUR 77.8 million, comprising a EUR 39.6 million grant and a EUR 38.1 million R&D loan, tied to an IPCEI notification approved by the European Commission.
The loan terms are disclosed in unusual detail. Ten-year term, the first five years a period of grace, 1% interest, granted with no requirement of collateral, with the state aid element estimated at EUR 6 million. The grant covers a maximum of 48% of eligible costs across 2027 to 2031, paid against cost statements the company must file at least twice a year.
Two things follow that the headline does not carry.
First, the money is conditional and, on the evidence of the release, undrawn. The release states the funding “is conditional upon the final investment decision for the Factory 02 production facility and securing the total financing,” and that the State Treasury pays the first loan instalment — around 30% of nominal value — only after the loan note is signed and the final investment decision has been submitted. Solar Foods says it aims to take that decision during 2026. This is the same announced-versus-drawn gap we traced through MOA Foodtech’s EIC award, where €1 million of a €12.5 million equity commitment had been activated eighteen months on.
Second, and more directly relevant to the totals: Solar Foods has been a listed company throughout the period the data covers. Trading in its shares commenced on Nasdaq First North Growth Market Finland on 10 September 2024, by direct listing, under the ticker SFOODS. GFI’s methodology categorises all investments into a company after it has gone public as public company investments, separately from private ones. On those published rules, no part of the €77.8 million package can sit inside the €236 million private figure — the grant is excluded as a grant, and the loan is excluded as financing into a listed company. We are inferring the treatment from the stated methodology rather than reading it off a line item, because the underlying deal list is not published.
The result is that the single largest financing event in European fermentation in the period — worth about a third of the entire European private total on its own — is invisible in the number the sector will quote all year. We covered the capacity questions attached to that factory in our analysis of how Factory 02’s denominator moved.
Practical consequence: do not use European private-investment totals to size the capital actually flowing into fermentation scale-up. The instruments that fund plants — grants, soft loans, IPCEI money, listed-company financing — are the ones the metric is built to exclude.
Fermentation’s 84% is a share of the residual, not of the money
Precision fermentation companies raised €100 million in H1 2026, exceeding the €97 million they raised across the whole of 2025. Biomass fermentation raised €99 million against €61 million for all of 2025. Together, €199 million — which against the €236 million total gives the 84% share that led the trade write-ups.
That 84% is sound arithmetic on the published figures. It is worth being precise about what it is a share of.
| Pillar | H1 2026 | Comparator given by GFI |
|---|---|---|
| Precision fermentation | €100m | €97m (full-year 2025) |
| Biomass fermentation | €99m | €61m (full-year 2025) |
| Cultivated meat | €18m | €20m (full-year 2025) |
| Plant-based | €18m | €61m (H1 2025) |
| Three pillars, summed | €235m | (our arithmetic: 100 + 99 + 18 + 18) |
| Published European total | €236m | (as published by GFI) |
Two observations. The pillars sum to €235m against a stated total of €236m, a €1 million gap consistent with rounding of the individual figures rather than a missing category.
More substantively, three of the four comparators are full-year 2025 numbers set against half-year 2026 numbers. GFI labels each one — “throughout the whole of 2025” — so nothing is concealed. But the convention makes growth read larger than a like-for-like comparison would, and only the plant-based line is stated half-year against half-year. A reader skimming for direction will take away that precision fermentation beat all of last year in six months, without registering that the cultivated line, €18m against €20m, is the same comparison run the other way.
Separately, fermentation companies took €67 million in grants in the period, against €45 million in grants across all pillars in H1 2025. Those grants are outside the €236m. Add them and fermentation’s H1 2026 capital intake is €266 million — more than the entire European private-investment total that the 84% is calculated against.
Practical consequence: the 84% describes the concentration of private deal flow, not the concentration of capital. On grants alone, the gap between the two framings is €67 million.
Where GFI is stricter than the press release
It would be easy to read the preceding sections as a criticism of the dataset. On the individual deals we checked, the opposite holds: GFI’s figures are the conservative ones and the trade headlines are the inflated ones.
GFI lists The Protein Brewery at €18 million. Food Manufacture’s headline on 30 June 2026 was “The Protein Brewery raises €48.2M in Series B funding, sets sights on active nutrition and longevity.” Both are right. The article’s own standfirst explains it: the company “has added a further €18 million to its Series B funding round,” bringing the Series B total to €48.2 million. GFI counts the €18 million of new money in the period; the headline counts the cumulative round.
Anyone building a sector total by adding published headline figures would book €48.2 million here and double-count €30.2 million raised earlier. That is a large part of why aggregated totals from trackers come in below the sum of the coverage, and it is an argument for using one methodologically-stated dataset rather than assembling from headlines — the point we made when three published counts of sector consolidation diverged.
The same discipline shows in the Verley line. GFI records €25 million, which is the equity, not the €32 million equity-plus-Bpifrance figure that produced the widely-quoted “$38m Series A.” That matches what we found reading the two French rounds directly.
The dollar figures do not all use the stated rate
The GFI post carries an explicit conversion note: “All dollar to euro conversions carried out using H1 2026’s average exchange rate of 0.8599.”
Most of the current-period figures do follow it. €236m converts to $274m, €100m to $117m, €99m to $115m, €67m to $77m, €18m to $21m — all consistent with 0.8599 after rounding.
Several comparators do not. €341 million is given as $388 million, implying about 0.879. €306 million is given as $359 million, implying about 0.852. €97 million is given as $104 million, implying about 0.933.
The clearest instance is internal. The post reports biomass fermentation’s full-year 2025 figure as “€61 million ($70 million)” and plant-based H1 2025 as “€61 million ($67 million).” The same euro amount, two dollar values, in one post.
The likely explanation is benign — comparator figures carried over from earlier publications converted at their own period’s rate, and the Solar Foods dollar figure taken from the source AgFunderNews article rather than reconverted. It does not affect the euro series, which is internally consistent and is what the analysis rests on.
Practical consequence: work in euros when using this dataset. The dollar figures are not a single converted series despite the note saying they are, and a model built on the dollar column will carry errors of up to roughly 8% on the 2025 comparators.
The counter-argument
The strongest objection is that the rest-of-world decline is a real finding but a fragile one, and that we have built a headline on a residual.
That is fair, and worth stating properly. The €70 million rest-of-world figure is not measured; it is what remains after subtracting a published European figure from a published global one. It inherits every limitation of both, and it assumes the two are constructed on the same basis — same company list, same deal types, same disclosure threshold. GFI does not state that explicitly, and if the global figure were compiled on a slightly different basis the residual would absorb the whole discrepancy. A small methodological difference between the two totals would show up as a large apparent swing in a €70 million remainder.
There is also a benign reading of the composition shift itself. GFI’s argument is that Europe is further advanced in combining grants, loans and equity, and that this is why European companies are still raising while others are not. On that reading the divergence is evidence that blended finance works, not that the sector is contracting — and the €67 million of fermentation grants supports it.
The counter-counter is narrower. Both things can be true: European blended finance may be working and the global total may still have fallen 10% with deal count halving. GFI reports that the number of deals globally halved over the same period, which means the surviving €306 million is spread across roughly half as many companies as a year earlier. That is the concentration pattern we described when funding was narrowing rather than recovering, now visible in a second, independently-compiled dataset. Concentration is compatible with a regional rise. It is not compatible with calling the year a rebound.
What we could not establish
- The European H1 2025 figure as published. GFI gives the percentage change, not the base. Our €151 million is derived from €236m ÷ 1.56 and is accurate to about ±€0.5 million on the rounding of 56%, not to the euro.
- Whether the European and global totals share a construction basis. Our rest-of-world residual assumes they do. GFI does not say so either way, and the deal-level data is not public.
- The precise value behind “more than three-quarters.” €236m of €306m is 77.1% on our arithmetic, which is consistent with the phrase, but GFI does not print the percentage.
- Whether Solar Foods’ €77.8 million appears anywhere in the dataset. We infer from the published methodology that it cannot be inside the €236 million private figure. We could not confirm how, or whether, it is recorded — the underlying deal list is not published.
- How much of the Business Finland package has been paid. The release describes it as conditional on a final investment decision Solar Foods aims to take during 2026, with the first loan instalment paid only afterwards. We found no later disclosure of a drawdown, and we do not treat a granted decision as money received.
- Whether the €67 million grant figure includes Solar Foods’ €39.6 million grant. If it does, more than half the fermentation grant total is one conditional award to one listed company. GFI does not itemise it, and we do not assume either way.
- The deal-count figures. GFI states the number of deals globally halved. It does not give the counts, so we cannot compute average deal size.
- Comparability with prior GFI publications. GFI explicitly warns that its figures are revised. Our 2025 comparisons use only figures printed in this post.
What to watch
Four testable claims, so this piece can be checked rather than admired.
- Whether the H2 2026 analysis publishes a global figure alongside the European one. If the next release leads on European growth without a global total, the composition shift becomes structurally invisible in the sector’s own reporting.
- Whether the rest-of-world residual recovers above €150 million in H1 2027. That is the test of whether H1 2026 was a trough or a level change. Computed the same way, from the same two published totals.
- Whether Solar Foods takes its Factory 02 final investment decision before 31 December 2026. The company’s own stated aim. Until it does, €77.8 million of the year’s most-cited blended-finance example remains conditional.
- Whether GFI begins publishing a grants-inclusive total. Its own argument is that blended finance is the route to scale-up. A metric that excludes grants and public loans cannot measure the thing the argument is about, and €67 million against €236 million is already too large a gap for the two to be read together casually.