Meet the 4 winners of the 2025 edition of TeamUp!

Led by Guido Hansen and Volodymyr Bilenkyi, Neborak is building Ukraine’s first integrated, land-based aquaculture ecosystem, combining R&D-driven production with community-powered small-scale farming. At its core is the Neborak Cluster — an education, training and innovation center where future farmers complete a one-year, on-the-job program before establishing their own land-based farms outside the cluster. Starting with its own solar-powered, chemical-free crayfish and shrimp facility, Neborak is developing a scalable model that strengthens rural livelihoods, reduces seafood imports and brings sustainable freshwater aquaculture to underused land across the country. 

Led by Marta Alexy, Martin Kralj and Gergo Toth, Birdwatcher is developing a new AI-powered poultry monitoring system under a fresh strategic direction. Built on prior technical and field experience, the system uses standard overhead cameras and a simple calibration tool to continuously estimate flock-wide weight with ±2–5% accuracy. 

Led by João Maria Xavier Santos, Manuel Varregoso, Vaiva Rivas and Anthony Demetroulakos, ANIMOB provides an efficient land management service with a vision. The digital platform connects livestock farmers, who need access to new grasslands, with landowners - from solar parks and forest managers to agriculture farmers - to provide a data-driven land management. ANIMOB solution transforms recurring maintenance costs into soil health and financial opportunities. By applying holistic grazing and regenerative land management methods, ANIMOB helps to: reduce land management costs, increase biodiversity, boost soil resilience against wildfires and support rural economies. 

Led by Alex Nemyrovski and Dovydas Palaima, UASILICA is creating bio-based adsorbents to help agricultural and energy companies not pay for utilization of waste they have created with plasma technologies; extracting silica and critical metals from waste with capex 10x lower and opex 30% lower than traditional factories without location restrictions due to emissions, environmental problems.

TeamUp is a 7-month programme that finds and matches up brilliant innovators with compatible and complementary profiles. TeamUp provides important tools and support to build an agrifood startup including expert guidance, world-class training, mentorship, networking and funding. The programme is designed for two types of innovators from Southern and Eastern Europe: technologists with innovative agrifood solutions and entrepreneurial business professionals who want to build an agrifood startup.  

Selected from over 382 applications, 40 technologists and 69 business professionals from 15 countries were invited to the Matchmaking phase of the 2025 TeamUp edition. During the Matchmaking month, participants were networking, getting to know each other, testing relationship through business scenarios, pitching and learning more about their own values and ambition.  

After the Matchmaking phase, 15 matches were made between tech innovators with agrifood solutions and business professionals. The 15 newly created teams continued into the Exploration phase during which they explored and tested their match. The teams were supported with business and team formation training, a monthly stipend, as well as business and team building coaching from 20 world-class experts.  

At the end of the programme, 15 teams presented their solutions and TeamUp journey during the Pitching Days. 

In case of any questions or interest in the winning teams, please feel free to contact TeamUp Programme leads Alexandra Kyvik (Startup Support Project Manager, alexandra.kyvik@eitfood.eu) and Juan Ignacio Zaffora (Head of Service Development, juan.zaffora@eitfood.eu).