Ynsect's insect-protein bet: $425M raised, world's largest bug farm, 2025 liquidation

Industrial insect farming: automated vertical farms raise mealworms and turn them into protein for fish and animal feed plus fertilizer, with pet food and human food as later markets.

That mealworm protein could replace fishmeal at industrial scale — build the world's largest insect farm first, and unit costs would fall to commodity levels.

$372M Series C in equity and debt (2020); ~$580M raised 2011–2025, including €148M in public subsidies per French finance ministry data.

Founded in 2011 by Antoine Hubert and Alexis Angot, Ynsect built a pilot mealworm farm in Dole, France, betting that aquaculture's surging protein demand would outgrow wild-caught fishmeal. In October 2020 it closed a record $372M Series C — backed by Astanor, Upfront, and Robert Downey Jr.'s Footprint Coalition — to build the world's largest insect farm near Amiens.

The Amiens farm opened in early 2022 and started protein production in summer 2024. Revenue stayed tiny — €5.8M in 2023 against roughly €104M in liabilities — and Ynsect said it needed about €130M more to reach a €131M-revenue 2028 plan. A safeguard filing in September 2024, a January 2025 tender for investors, and conversion to judicial recovery in March 2025 all failed to secure a buyer.

On 1 December 2025 the Évry commercial court ordered judicial liquidation after Ynsect could not fund a continuation plan. The Dole site found a partial buyer (biosolutions maker Kepréa), while the Amiens mega-farm closed and about 43 remaining employees faced redundancy.

The demand signal was real — aquaculture protein use was growing fast — but Ynsect bet customers would pay industrial prices for insect protein before the cost curve came down.

It chose a scale-first strategy: a capital-intensive, fully automated farm presumed unit costs would fall once built, leaving no room for delay or funding gaps.

Revenue stayed minuscule (€5.8M in 2023) while liabilities and headcount grew, so each rescue round needed ever-larger new capital at the worst moment of the climate-tech funding slump.

Cheaper conventional proteins — soy and fishmeal — undercut insect meal exactly when the European insect-protein market was still tiny, making the 'build big, then price low' plan untenable.

Scale-first industrial bets only pay off if unit costs fall before funding runs out: Ynsect built the farm, but insect protein never beat cheaper soy and fishmeal.

As of September 2026 Ynsect is in liquidation: the Évry court's 1 December 2025 ruling ended operations, roughly 43 remaining employees were made redundant, and only the Dole site was partially taken over by biosolutions maker Kepréa. The empty Amiens mega-farm is being redeveloped by regional authorities, and the collapse continues to be debated in French media and politics because of the €148M of public money involved.