Innovafeed Raises $55M for Insect-Based Animal Feed

Jan de Vries · 2026-06-05

Innovafeed, a Paris-based biotech startup that creates sustainable insect-based ingredients for animal nutrition, pet food, and agriculture, just secured a $55 million funding round. Most of this cash comes from its financial partners, marking a major step forward for the company. The money comes from longtime supporters like Creadev, QIA, Temasek, FFC, ABC Impact, and ADM, plus several banking partners. Innovafeed says it's now done with the industrialization phase and is reorganizing around its Nesle site to focus on commercial growth. ### What This Funding Means This isn't just another round of funding. It signals that Innovafeed has figured out how to scale up its technology. The company's CEO and co-founder, Clement Ray, puts it this way: "Since day one, we have carried a dual ambition: to demonstrate that we can produce high-performing, competitive, and sustainable ingredients for nutrition without relying on the intensive exploitation of marine resources; and that it is possible to build an innovative industrial project in France." Ray adds, "The successful scale-up of our industrial model marks a major milestone for Innovafeed today and opens up a new phase of commercial deployment."  ### How It Works Founded in 2016 by Aude Guo, Bastien Oggeri, and Clement Ray, Innovafeed raises and transforms the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) into protein and oil. These ingredients replace fishmeal and vegetable oils in fish and animal feed, which is a big deal for sustainability. Their setup is pretty wild. They use 3,000 sensors to keep the larvae growing in perfect conditions. AI handles most of the work, with robots collecting and counting the 20,000 eggs laid every second. This lets them mimic the insect's natural cycle on a massive scale. They also developed a wet processing method that keeps the final product high-quality, especially when it comes to digestibility.  ### Past Success and Current Milestones Innovafeed's last big raise was in 2022, when they pulled in $273 million in Series D funding led by QIA. Since then, they've hit three huge goals: - Their Nesle production unit is fully up and running - They've produced over 15,000 tons of protein and oil in three years - Production volumes have jumped tenfold, while costs dropped by seven times Revenue has doubled every year, thanks to solid partnerships with customers. And their products cut carbon emissions by 70 to 90 percent compared to standard options, thanks to a circular model where waste from one process feeds another. ### Looking Ahead Now that the R&D and industrial phases are behind them, Innovafeed is shifting gears. They're reorganizing to focus on commercial growth. That means moving some zootechnical R&D from their Gouzeaucourt site to Nesle, which will result in about 60 job cuts, mostly at Gouzeaucourt. Benedicte Monpert, Food Managing Director at Creadev, says, "Over the past five years, Innovafeed has won its industrial bet and developed a world-unique asset: a fully operational large-scale production facility that enables highly optimised production of ingredients with functional properties that are valued by pet food and aquaculture players." In this new phase, the company will redirect its investments toward scaling up sales and marketing efforts. The goal is to get their ingredients into more pet food and fish feed products across the U.S. and other markets.