Finches, a Bavaria-based startup developing AI for agricultural procurement, has raised €2 million in a pre-Seed funding round to accelerate product development and expand its sales operations.
The round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), with Vanagon Ventures joining as co-lead. Bayern Kapital joined as a new investor, while existing backer UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators and a syndicate of strategic industry and tech angels doubled down with follow-on capital. The company closed this round at the end of a summer when Europe went through its own drought.
Catharina van Delden, CEO and co-founder, Finches, said, “This drought made one thing clear: European food producers can no longer count on getting the raw material volumes and quality they need every season. Sourcing raw materials has become a core issue of supply security. While risk signals usually emerge weeks ahead of time, procurement teams rarely see them in time to act. This funding lets us bring Finches to more companies, so they can line up backup suppliers, buy earlier, or reschedule production while there is still time.”
Founded in 2025 by Catharina van Delden (CEO) and Dr. Stefanie Glenn (CTO), Finches consolidates field, sourcing, and external data (such as climate and market information) to proactively warn companies in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries about supply chain risks. In January 2026, Alexandra Vázquez Bea joined the executive team as CFO/COO and co-founder.
The startup states that for millennia, global agriculture relied on stable, predictable climate cycles. It highlighted that today, climate change, extreme weather, and geopolitical crises have destroyed that predictability.
“Companies reliant on agricultural raw materials face extreme volatility that legacy supply chain processes were never built to handle. Supply shortfalls start in the field, months before crops ever reach the factory gate, but traditional systems only spot them when it is already too late,” the company mentioned in the press release.
Finches claims to solve this by aggregating field observations into a unified database across growing regions and supplier networks. The company says it combines internal procurement data, such as supplier profiles, cultivated acreage, and contracts, with external signals like weather patterns, satellite imagery, local news, scientific insights, and field reports from on-the-ground agronomists.
The platform notes that it transforms these inputs into targeted early warnings, identifying impacted regions and supply chains while giving buyers clear, actionable next steps.
According to the company, this enables procurement teams to proactively protect volume, quality, and margins long before crop failures or quality issues threaten production.
Finches Intelligence launched in September 2026, with early customers including a leading organic baby food manufacturer and a North American Fortune 500 food conglomerate.
“The forces shaping agriculture form a highly complex system, and the biggest hurdle has been that relevant data was scattered across disconnected silos. Finches unifies these isolated streams. We connect hyper-local, real-time field observations with broader geopolitical trends, market data, global climate models, and internal company records. That turns an overwhelming number of variables into clear decisions. and gives teams full control over sourcing chain complexity,” said Dr. Glenn.