Freshflow brings AI to Europe's fresh aisles and closes $10M Series A

Reimann Investors leads the round. Capnamic, caesar., World Fund, Venture Stars and Catatumbo Capital all re-invest. IBB Ventures joins as a co-investor.

Berlin/Munich, 03 May 2026 – Freshflow, Europe's first AI platform purpose-built for the fresh supply chain in grocery retail, has closed a $10M Series A round. With it, the Berlin-based startup is taking on one of Europe's largest structural sources of waste: of the roughly €720 billion European grocers turn over in fresh food every year, €216 billion ends up in the bin. The round is led by Munich-based Reimann Investors; all existing investors (Capnamic, caesar., World Fund, Venture Stars and Catatumbo Capital) are re-investing substantially. Joining for the first time: IBB Ventures, one of Berlin's most active institutional early-stage investors.

A supermarket employee using Freshflow

What the AI delivers in stores today:

1. Up to 30% less spoilage per store
2. 2–4% more revenue per store
3. 94% acceptance rate of AI recommendations by store staff, far above the industry standard of 50–60% for classical forecasting systems

Founded in Berlin in 2021 by Avik Mukhija, a former ETH machine-learning scientist, Freshflow has spent more than five years developing a fully in-house, fresh-native AI stack. Today, Freshflow is a crucial part of daily operations at nine leading grocery retailers in Germany and France, including some of the largest independent merchants operating within groups like EDEKA, Carrefour and Intermarché, as well as the Stroetmann group and others.

The last great blind spot in grocery retail

While dry goods (from canned food to laundry detergent) have been re-ordered automatically for more than twenty years, fresh has remained largely manual to this day. Store staff order every day based on gut feel, because no central system can reliably reflect what is actually happening in the fresh department.

The reason is structural. Where dry goods are plannable, countable and centrally organized, inventory in the fresh department is effectively unknown: no central system knows reliably at any given moment what is actually on the shelf, what has spoiled overnight, and what can still be sold. On top of that, products are highly perishable, supply chains are regionally fragmented, loose goods don't have barcodes, and hundreds of daily ordering decisions are made per store. A discipline of its own, and exactly the reason why loudly announced solution attempts have been quietly shelved one after the other over the past years.

An AI that finally understands fresh

That is where Freshflow comes in: an app that store staff use daily, guiding them precisely what to order, from which supplier, and in what quantity. Behind it: more than five years of R&D and a fully in-house, fresh-native AI stack, not a recycled forecasting layer from the dry-goods world, but every component built from the ground up for the specific realities of fresh. For retailers, this translates into a significant margin uplift, a 2–4% revenue increase, and up to 30% less spoilage per store.

The window is now

In 2026, fresh is the most important competitive arena between European retailers, the stage on which full-range retailers must defend themselves against the discounters. On top of that comes the EU 2030 mandate to halve food waste. At this ripe moment, Freshflow appears as the first serious technological answer.

What the round enables

Three levers with concrete milestones:

1. Enterprise growth: deepening collaboration with large European chains, from group headquarters all the way into the individual store.
2. Product depth: extending the AI to all fresh categories (meat, bakery, in-store production) by Q4 2026, and beyond the store into warehouse replenishment: "from Store to Source", from a store assistant to a control system for distribution centers and producers.
3. European expansion: deepening in DACH and France, controlled market entry into further European markets from 2027.
   
   

Building the team

The round also kicks off significant hiring in Berlin, Paris (and partially Europe-wide remote): 30+ new roles across engineering, ML, data science, sales and customer success over the next 12 months. Open positions at freshflow.ai/careers.

Voices from the round

Avik Mukhija, Founder and CEO of Freshflow:

"Fresh is a world of its own: perishable, unpredictable, deeply local, with unreliable inventories. This reality doesn't exist in any ERP. That's why we spent more than five years building an AI fully in-house, made exclusively for the fresh department. This round gives us the means to scale what we've proven, and structurally fix one of Europe's largest sources of waste. With Reimann Investors, we have a lead investor on board who understands how B2B software scales in complex markets."

Samuel Schuler, Managing Director at Reimann Investors:

"What convinced us about Freshflow is the combination of proven impact in the market, a founder in Avik and a team with real domain expertise, and a go-to-market dynamic that isn't easy to copy. The bottom-up approach via entrepreneurially run stores is not a coincidence — it is the strategy. And it works. The commitment of all existing investors in this round is a clear signal."

Cindy Beckel, Investment Manager at IBB Ventures:

"Freshflow makes the invisible visible and the unpredictable predictable – tackling unnecessary food waste as one of the 21st century's most fundamental problems. We're proud that this transformation is being built from Berlin, and happy to back Freshflow on their journey to reshape an entire industry."

About Freshflow – Freshflow is Europe's first AI platform purpose-built for the fresh supply chain in grocery retail. Founded in Berlin in 2021 by Avik Mukhija, a former ETH machine-learning scientist, the company has spent more than five years developing a fully in-house, fresh-native AI stack, made exclusively for the realities of fresh: perishability, local suppliers, missing inventory data, and hundreds of ordering decisions per store every day. Freshflow is today part of daily operations at leading grocery retailers across Germany and France, reducing food waste in deployed stores by up to 30 percent. More at www.freshflow.ai.

About Reimann Investors – Reimann Investors is a Munich-based venture capital investor focused on early growth-stage B2B SaaS, fintech and AI companies in the DACH region. As an active partner, Reimann Investors combines entrepreneurially shaped capital with operational expertise and an established network of industry experts. The investment approach is selective and value-oriented — with a clear focus on sustainable growth, operational excellence and long-term value creation. More information at: www.reimann-investors.com

About IBB Ventures – IBB Ventures has been providing venture capital to innovative Berlin-based companies since 1997 and is one of the most active early-stage investors in Berlin. In addition to its two VC funds for technology and creative industries with a combined volume of €100 million, and the €30 million Impact VC Fund launched in 2022, the €10 million Pre-Seed Fund B# ("be sharp") for Berlin-based deep-tech startups has been in its investment phase since 2025. The funds are financed through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB). To date, IBB Ventures has invested in approximately 300 Berlin-based companies. Together with investment partners in consortia, these startups have raised more than €2 billion in total, of which IBB Ventures has contributed more than €300 million as lead, co-lead, or co-investor. IBB Ventures is the umbrella brand for the VC activities of IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft and part of the IBB Group.