👋 Morning — grab your coffee, this one's a big pour. Two utilities went shopping for water assets, a fusion startup topped up its war chest, and an Israeli protein company bought its way into Belgium. About a four-minute read.

Our premium AgTech Digest went deep on a quiet-on-the-surface week that still carried real weight: EW Group's completed buyout of French biologicals maker Olmix, a $15 million Series B for Australian livestock tracker Ranchbot, and a new USDA-DHS biosecurity pact aimed at the screwworm outbreak that's already cost Florida citrus 95% of its production.

Water utilities kept consolidating. Veralto agreed to pay $465 million for Cleanwater1, a US disinfection and odor-control specialist with 25,000 installed units, at roughly 17 times trailing earnings. Days later, H2O America got the green light to close its own $540 million acquisition of Quadvest in the Greater Houston area, a deal that will make it Texas's second-largest investor-owned water utility and push the state to more than a quarter of the company's total service base by 2029.

Why it matters: two nine-figure water deals in one week means utilities are racing to lock down growth markets before consolidation gets pricier.

Food and ag services had their own busy week. Mérieux NutriSciences is acquiring Certified Group, a Warburg Pincus-backed testing and certification network with 31 North American labs and about $300 million in annual revenue, expected to close in Q4. GrubMarket made its first move outside the US, buying UK produce distributor JR Holland to extend its software-and-logistics playbook across the Atlantic. And Ever After Foods picked up Belgium's Fishway, adding a scientific team and cell-line library to its cultivated-protein platform alongside a fresh $2 million strategic investment.

Elsewhere, A1R water began trading on the Nasdaq under ticker WATR after closing a $96 million PIPE anchored by Inflection Point and Southern Glazer's, funding to scale its atmospheric water production. And Cosan told the SEC it plans to voluntarily delist its American depositary shares from the NYSE next month, keeping its primary listing on B3 as it simplifies its capital structure.

Nuclear and fusion drew the biggest checks. Apollo Atomics raised $31 million — a $26 million seed led by FCVC plus $5 million in debt — to commercialize a factory-built steam generator that shrinks reactors to a fortieth of conventional size. Thea Energy extended its Series B with new backers including Brevan Howard Macro Venture, building on the $100 million round Thomas Tull's fund led in May. And Distributed Sun anchored the $1 billion capital base behind new platform trutility, which launches already holding gigawatt-hour-scale battery storage and microgrids across 14 utility territories.

On the ag side, Stanford-linked Mafix raised $5.4 million pre-seed led by Azolla Ventures to scale a CO2-absorbing silicon fertilizer made from idle cement-kiln capacity, and Germany's Computomics closed a €6.3 million Series B led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund to expand its climate-smart crop-breeding platform. New Zealand's Vessev raised $19 million to bring its electric hydrofoiling vessels to the US, naming Lake Tahoe operator FlyTahoe as its first American customer. Smaller checks landed too: EnerPure closed $35 million for its used-motor-oil-to-marine-fuel plant in Alberta, Abundia Global Impact Group drew a $10 million credit facility, and Above Food Ingredients took in the first tranche of a $1.375 million strategic investment.

On the debt side, Swift Current Energy lined up a $750 million corporate credit facility (with room to grow to $1 billion) to fund its US development pipeline, Foss & Company closed $150 million in tax equity for an Illinois community solar portfolio under the new Section 48E framework, SalMar won approval for $531 million in green bond listings on the Oslo exchange, and Australia's Quinbrook reached financial close on A$469 million for the next phase of its Supernode battery project with CATL.

Nuclear had its busiest week of the month. Atomic Canyon's AI assistant NIVA moved from pilot to fleetwide deployment across every INPO, EPRI and NEI member plant, SHINE Technologies struck two separate DOE-linked partnerships on fuel recycling and material accountability, and NANO Nuclear and Kairos Power each signed new supply and manufacturing collaborations. Battery storage kept building out too: Enphase opened US pre-orders for its first commercial storage system, LG Energy Solution started production at its $2 billion Lansing, Michigan plant, and EDP Renewables completed a 92 MW project in California's Kern County. On the deal-making front, ENGIE signed a 48 MW solar PPA with data-center operator QTS in Texas, and Chinese and Malaysian solar contractors kept racking up smaller project wins.

Singapore's national water agency picked ROTEC to design reverse osmosis for the 86-million-gallon-per-day Changi NEWater Factory 3, its largest reuse win to date, while South Korea's WACO Corp. unveiled a redesigned public water refill station after a strong Tokyo pilot. Salvus brought a rapid on-site PFAS screening tool to market, cutting utilities' reliance on lab turnaround. Stateside, Pennsylvania American Water detailed more than $1 billion in planned infrastructure upgrades alongside expanded bill assistance, while Hawaii American Water reported a storm-triggered wastewater discharge in Honolulu — its second violation flagged at the same plant since 2025.

Product launches led the week. HabiTerre debuted SYMFONI+, calling it the first platform to run agricultural sustainability programs end-to-end, and Mosaic Biosciences launched a crop-residue enzyme treatment that showed stand-establishment gains of up to 6.4% in soybean trials. GoSun unveiled a solar-charged compact tractor ahead of next month's Farm Progress Show, Agtonomy added fully autonomous multi-point turning to its off-road autonomy platform, and FarmRaise launched a tool letting farmers share verified data once across a dozen program partners instead of resubmitting it for each. In Spain, AI decision-support firm Völur signed pork processor Avinyó to squeeze more value per carcass, and Cirkla broke ground on the first US plant dedicated to molded-fiber meat packaging, in Georgia.

The more you share, the more you unlock: refer 1 friend for our ranked breakdown of H1 2026's most active AgTech investors, hit 3 referrals for a shout-out in an upcoming Digest, or bring in 7 to earn a full month of free Network Insights access.

The iGrowNews Intelligence Dashboard tracks funding rounds, partnerships, product launches, and market activity across energy, water and agriculture in real time — filter by region, sector, and company type.

Tell us what you thought of this edition — it helps shape what we cover next.