What Brami's $33M Round Says About Raising Money in Food Right Now

Edited by The VEGPRENEUR Team

Big venture rounds for food brands have gotten rare, which makes the ones that do close worth studying. A recent Modern Retail report lays out just how tight the climate is: per Carta data, consumer startups raised roughly $800 million in the first quarter of 2025, the lowest since 2019, and the median consumer seed round fell to about $700,000, a six-year low. With AI soaking up most venture dollars, food brands are competing for what's left.

Two brands recently broke through that ceiling, and one of them is a plant-based company worth a close look for VEGPRENEUR founders. Pasta maker Brami raised a $33 million Series B, and brain-health snack brand Mosh raised a $13 million Series A. The reasons investors backed them are the useful part.

Brami: a plant-based brand betting on premium, not just better-for-you

Brami is the one that fits squarely in the plant-based world. Its pasta is made in Molise, Italy from just two ingredients, durum wheat semolina and lupini bean flour, and it's certified vegan and Non-GMO with no gums, fillers, or protein isolates. The company says the result has about 70% more protein, three times the fiber, and 25% fewer net carbs than conventional pasta.

The Series B was led by VMG Partners, with existing backers including La Molisana, Pentland Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Gather Ventures. It's a major step up from the roughly $6.5 million Series A the brand closed in 2023. Brami is now in more than 4,000 stores, including Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Costco, and Sam's Club, with recent launches at Sprouts and in Albertsons' Intermountain division. Founder and CEO Aaron Gatti told Modern Retail the company expects 400% year-over-year sales growth this year, and that about half the round is earmarked for growth and retail expansion, the other half for sourcing lupini and premium wheat.

The strategic takeaway Gatti described is the one worth internalizing: rather than competing as another “healthy” alternative, Brami is trying to premiumize a commoditized mass category, merging the taste of traditional dried pasta with functional nutrition. For plant-based founders, that's a reminder that investors are rewarding brands that move into huge, everyday categories rather than staying in a niche aisle, especially when a product can frame itself as an affordable upgrade during inflation.

Mosh: a useful contrast, with a caveat

Mosh is the other brand in the Modern Retail story, and it's worth being precise here. Co-founded in 2021 by Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger, Mosh is a brain-health snack brand, and its signature bars are built on dairy and animal protein, whey isolate, whey concentrate, grass-fed milk protein, and bovine collagen, so the core line is not vegan. The company has since added a separate plant-based line using pea, soy, and pumpkin protein, but the higher-protein, creatine-based bars tied to this raise sit in its conventional, dairy-based range.

So Mosh isn't a plant-based success story, but its playbook still holds a lesson. President Jeff Gamsey told Modern Retail that the brand knew exactly which metrics Series A investors wanted before it started raising, and that the key was velocity in conventional grocery, not just natural channels. After launching in Erewhon about 18 months ago and becoming a top-four protein bar there, then rolling into Sprouts, Kroger banners, and Target, the brand could show it was top-quartile across accounts. Investors read that conventional-retail traction as proof the brand could scale.

The signal for plant-based founders

Across both rounds, the through-line, as a New Fare Partners investor quoted in the piece put it, is that capital is concentrating on brands with a very specific value proposition: either a clear better-for-you trend or velocity that compounds in mainstream retail. For VEGPRENEUR founders, the practical reads are concrete. Plant-based positioning still attracts investment when it's paired with a large, everyday category and real shelf velocity, as Brami shows. Know the exact traction metrics your target investors expect before you start a raise. And proving a product moves in conventional grocery, not only in natural-foods stores, is increasingly what de-risks a brand in investors' eyes.