Pesto, the ERP platform built by food industry veterans for ambitious food and drink brands, today announced it has closed a £0.8m funding round to accelerate the adoption of its AI-powered operations and insights software. The oversubscribed round led by Fuel Ventures, and including Prequel Ventures, Antler, Ventures Together, Leo Lion, Mark Philip-Sorensen, CEO & Founder of Sorven Capital Limited and other angel investors reflects strong investor confidence in Pesto’s mission to optimise operations, improve profitability and build supply chain resilience for businesses across the food and drink sector.
The funding comes at a critical time for the industry. Food and beverage manufacturers saw a 28% year-on-year drop in profit margins last year, while food inflation has risen 13-fold in just three years. Food production accounts for over a quarter of global carbon emissions, and unhealthy diets are costing the UK economy £268 billion annually.
Founded by CEO Kate Hofman (GrowUp Farms, IBM), COO Sanjay Sood-Smith (Tuk In, Bain & Co) and CTO Amish Ralhan (Citi, Galaxy), Pesto’s vision is to be the single connected platform for the food system, combining core commercial processes and data with sustainability analysis. Designed for the unique needs of food and drink producers and brands, its technology reduces admin workload by 75% and eliminates spreadsheet chaos and costly manual errors.
Pesto automates and connects key workflows such as order management, document generation, invoicing and inventory management. Its AI reads purchase orders from emails, PDFs and EDI and pulls them into the system, delivery notes and production documents are created automatically, integrated invoicing streamlines cash flow, and stock management with batch traceability helps manufacturers and brands maintain control.
The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand integrations and scale sales and customer support as Pesto targets rapid growth in the UK and international markets.
