uwe.roland.gross

Surprise! A $600 Million Insect Protein Animal Feed Business Just Went Bankrupt

Close-up view of mealworms on a conveyor belt in a farming facility, with green plastic bins in the background.

A French insect farming startup that specialized in producing mealworm-based protein primarily for animal feed (aquaculture, livestock, and poultry) and pet food, with some exploration into fertilizers and limited human applications.

An industrial insect farming facility featuring large transparent containers filled with mealworms, alongside workers examining the production area with machinery in the background.

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

A modern insect farming facility with mealworm production equipment and a group of professionals discussing operations.

First published JoNova, Tom Nelson – Even starving dogs wouldn’t eat their product?

How reality crushed Ÿnsect, the French startup that had raised over $600M for insect farming

Anna Heim
2:52 PM PST · December 26, 2025

French startup Ÿnsect shot into the spotlight when “Iron Man” star Robert Downey Jr. touted its merits on the “Late Show” during Super Bowl weekend 2021. Now, nearly four years later, the insect farming company has been placed into judicial liquidation — essentially bankruptcy — for insolvency. 

…

And revenue was the problem. According to publicly available data, Ÿnsect’s revenue from its main entity peaked at €17.8 million in 2021 (approximately $21 million) — a figure reportedly inflated by internal transfers between subsidiaries. By 2023, the company had racked up a net loss of €79.7 million ($94 million).

…

But the vision collided with market reality. Animal feed is a commodity market driven by price, not sustainability premiums. …

…

The 2023 pivot to pet food came too late. By then, Ÿnsect had already committed to a massive, capital-intensive bet that would ultimately doom the company. That bet was Ÿnfarm, a “giga-factory” in Northern France that the company billed “the world’s most expensive bug farm.” Built for insect production at scale, the facility consumed hundreds of millions in funding — money spent before Ÿnsect had proven its business model or figured out its unit economics.

…Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/26/how-reality-crushed-ynsect-the-french-startup-that-had-raised-over-600m-for-insect-farming/

I love it when green activists and clueless Hollywood celebrities think they know how to run a business.

The fools blew hundreds of millions of dollars on a giant production plant, only to discover their target market didn’t exist. By the time they realised their original plan was a bust, they used internal transfers to inflate reported revenue, then tried to retool their plant for their new target market. But there wasn’t enough money left to solve their retooled plant production problems, so they ran out of cash.

Anyone who has ever run their own business knows that if possible, you start small and field test your ideas, even if you have lots of capital burning a hole in your pocket. No business plan survives contact with reality, you have to test and refine your plan, and if necessary, completely ditch the original plan and pivot into doing something new, while preserving as much capital as possible for the big push once your idea starts to generate revenue.

A researcher in protective gear inspecting mealworm substrate in a laboratory setting, surrounded by containers of insect farming material.

Details:

  • Raised over $600 million (approximately €600 million) in funding since 2011 from high-profile investors, including Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition, venture firms like Astanor Ventures, and significant public money from France’s Bpifrance and taxpayer subsidies.
  • In late December 2025, a French commercial court placed the company into judicial liquidation (the French equivalent of bankruptcy) due to insolvency, after months of financial struggles, failed restructuring attempts, and inability to secure additional funding.
  • The company’s massive “Ÿnfarm” facility in Amiens, France—billed as the world’s largest and most advanced insect farm—became a major money sink, costing hundreds of millions before proving viable economics.

Failure:

Despite the hype around sustainability (insects as a low-impact alternative to soy or fishmeal), the business collapsed because:

  • Animal feed is a low-margin commodity market where buyers prioritize the cheapest option—insect protein was 2–10 times more expensive than traditional sources.
  • Scaling issues → production challenges (diseases, parasites, inconsistent quality), high energy and input costs, and reliance on feedstocks that weren’t truly “waste-based” at scale.
  • Revenue never took off → peaking at around €18 million (~$21 million) in 2021, with massive losses (e.g., €80 million net loss in 2023).
  • A late pivot to higher-margin pet food came too late to save the overbuilt infrastructure.

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