ENTRY VALIDATION
The first step when creating the final list was to manually validate every entry to create a shortlist of 500 finalists based on the following criteria.
FOODTECH DEFINITION
FOODTECH DEFINITION
The core company activity fits with our definition of AgriFoodTech as “The emergent sector exploring how technology can be leveraged to improve efficiency and sustainability in designing, producing, choosing, delivering & enjoying food”
ACTIVE WEBSITE
ACTIVE WEBSITE
The company is an incorporated entity and has an active website
COMPANY YOUTH
COMPANY YOUTH
The company was formed less than 15 years ago
SCORING MECHANISM
The FoodTech 500 methodology has never stood still. Every edition, scores are benchmarked against that year’s applicant pool, which is why we’ve always said results are not directly comparable from one year to the next. As the sector matures, the way we assess it matures too.
For 2026, we’ve distilled a decade of sector tracking through the FoodTech Data Navigator (FDN) and seven editions of applications into a refined scoring framework built around three dimensions: Business Viability, Innovation & Differentiation, Sustainibility.
Underpinning all three dimensions is deep due diligence from our team. Alongside the application form, website, and pitch deck scanning, data cross-checking against FoodTech Data Navigator, we are conducting additional research to verify and enrich provided information.
Business Viability
How mature and commercially validated a company is. At the heart of this dimension sits commercial traction assessed on evidence: named customers, confirmed pilots, deployment reach, retail listings. Companies that can point to real adoption in the market will see that reflected in their score, whatever their funding stage.
Innovation & Differentiation
How novel and defensible a company’s solution is. Every technology domain gets assessed on its own merits: what the solution actually does, how it works, and what makes it hard to replicate, from patents to proprietary processes to unique data. Substance carries the score.
Sustainability
How strongly a company contributes to a more sustainable and inclusive food system. The SDG assessment, developed with sustainability experts from the University of Turin, captures a company’s full SDG footprint. And as we shared in our recent reflection on the ranking, we committed to widening the lens for the eighth edition. The new Equity & Impact component is a first concrete step: it recognises founder diversity, solutions serving the Global South, and companies focused on vulnerable and underserved populations.
CREDITS
The FoodTech 500 list is prepared under the direction of Alessio D’Antino, Forward Fooding CEO. All information and data provided by the companies are reviewed and verified by Forward Fooding’s team. In addition, we used data provided by the FoodTech Data Navigator Intelligence, which deploys the Data Scouts technology to calculate the digital footprint score and the business size score.
The following individuals have collaborated with Forward Fooding’s team to bring to life the scoring methodology behind the FoodTech 500: Patricia Jurado, Jennibeth Paglinawan, Max Leveau, and Alessio D’Antino, among other collaborators.
A special thanks goes to the sustainability experts from the Department of Management (University of Turin, Italy): Paola De Bernardi, Simona Grande and Alberto Bertello who were instrumental to develop the methodology for creating the sustainability score.
Forward Fooding is the world’s first collaborative platform for the food and beverage industry. We run a network of entrepreneurs powered by entrepreneurs that connects corporate executives with the right innovators in order to enable meaningful collaborations that deliver real business outcomes for both parties
To learn more visit: forwardfooding.com
