MoFo Food & Ag: Deals, Events, & Insights (Q1 Newsletter)

Happy 2026 from the MoFo Food & Ag team. 2025 was a massive year; we supported some of the most innovative companies and deals in the sector. The first quarter is off to a busy start; our partners are on the ground at leading events, and we’re hosting our own as well. Read on for our top deals of 2025, our Q1 events, and recent insights from our partners.

A Look Back at Our Top Work of 2025

1. The Good Crisp Company: Advised the brand, offering classic snack formats reimagined with a cleaner label and healthier attributes, in its acquisition by MPearlRock, a strategic partnership focused on identifying, backing, and building high-growth, emerging consumer brands.
2. Caulipower: Advised the company in its sale to Urban Farmer, a portfolio company of Paine Schwartz Partners and a fully integrated producer of specialty dough products, creating a vertically integrated, scaled leader in the better-for-you frozen pizza and dough industry.
3. Nitricity: Advised the climate-tech startup, creating sustainable, organic nitrogen fertilizers by harnessing air, water, renewable energy, and almond shells, on the completion of its US$50 million Series B financing round.
4. David Protein: Advised on its US$75 million Series A, led by Greenoaks with the participation of Valor Equity Partners. We also advised David on its acquisition of Epogee, the food technology firm behind EPG, a plant based fat alternative. 
5. Grüns: Advised the fast-growing nutrition startup that offers gummy multivitamins packed with whole-food ingredients on the Series B that propelled the company toward a US$500 million valuation.
6. Gates Ag One: Secured a key patent that covers a genetically altered plant that utilizes a novel photorespiratory bypass, representing a foundational piece of IP in its program aimed at increasing photosynthetic efficiency in plants. 

Q1 Events

• February 6 – March 27 – Virtual – MoFo ScaleUp’s multipart Zoom series dives deep into raising VC capital, follow-on complexities, exit strategies, and more. RSVP.
• February 21 – Stanford, CA – We are sponsoring the first Consumer Health Tech Summit. Partners from our Emerging Companies/Venture Capital, Patent, and Litigation teams will be attending. 
• February 24 – St. Louis, MO – Plant IP Seminar & Social – Food & Ag co-chair Mike Ward and partner Meghan Poon will walk through best practices for IP protection of new agriculture technologies followed by a networking reception. RSVP.
• February 24–25 – Chicago, IL – Regulatory partner Brian Sylvester is speaking at the Future Protein Production Summit on the regulatory legal frameworks for novel foods. 
• March 3–5 – Anaheim, CA – Partners from all of our practice groups will be attending Expo West this year and hosting two happy hours. Reply to this email if you’d like to join our events and haven’t in the past. 
• March 17–19 – San Francisco, CA – Cross-practice partners will be in San Francisco for Future Food Tech and World Agritech. We will be sponsoring and attending leading events during that week. Reply to this email if you’d like to connect in person.

Our Recent Insights

• What You Need to Know About FDA’s 2026 HFP Priority Deliverables – Regulatory partners Brian Sylvester and Brigid Bondoc expound on FDA’s newly released food regulatory priorities consistent with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) strategy to advance food chemical safety, nutrition, and microbiological risk oversight for the year ahead. 
• Global Private Equity Outlook for 2026 – PE co-chair Omar Pringle breaks down private equity trends in the Food & Ag sector, from Better For-You dominating Consumer M&A, to continued corporate portfolio rebalancing creating openings for PE, to the proliferation of AI as the key differentiating factor in valuation and exit potential across the value chain.
• Term Sheet Pitfalls: 5 Fundraises, 5 Takeaways – Chuck Cotter and Habitat Partners do a deep dive into what is and isn’t working for food and ag founders in the current funding environment. They cover the power of diverse outreach cohorts, the worst source for investor introductions, momentum vs. need raises, and the (un)importance of valuation. 
• Breaking Down the Legal Considerations of the USDA Dietary Guidelines – From diverse protein sources, to fat-rich whole foods, to explicit recognition of dietary supplements, Regulatory partners Brian Sylvester and Brigid Bondoc note how the guidelines will impact food and ag players as they are applied across federal nutrition policy.

Meet the Food & Ag Leadership Team

MoFo’s global cross-disciplinary Food & Ag team of 150 lawyers and patent agents combines science, technology, and business strategy to counsel clients throughout the value chain and their life cycle. We advise on everything from IP protection, regulatory compliance, and product liability, to financing and commercial transactions, to M&A and private equity.