The indoor-farming industry grows primarily leafy greens in massive warehouses, with the goal of either supplementing or outright replacing traditional outdoor growing. The industry has also experimented with crops like herbs, wheat, and tomatoes.

But there is another indoor-farming industry, one that specializes in the kind of critters you most likely wouldn’t want to eat. Thousands of racks lead insects through their life cycle, where their protein is harvested to make feed for animals, and sometimes humans.

• Companies like Ynsect and Innovafeed, two major players in the industry, provide insect feed to pet-food companies and fish-farming operations in the aquaculture industry.

The aquaculture industry is heavily reliant on fishmeal, which is made from smaller marine life. Fishmeal supply is unstable due to factors including overfishing, pollution, and a decrease in fish catches, according to the scientific journal Animals. That is a whale-sized problem for aquaculture demand, which has increased 30% from the average in the early 2000s globally; it accounted for 7% of domestic seafood production by weight in 2022, according to NOAA.

If fishmeal stock struggles to keep up with demand, it could hinder a growing international aquaculture industry. That’s where insects come in: Insect-feed companies are hoping to meet that demand with supply by mixing their feed with fishmeal (or replacing it) while maintaining a similar nutritional profile.

“Insect meal is a high-quality protein ingredient. It’s in line with a lot of other ingredients we have that we can then use as we see fit. We have some customers that want to have low- or high-marine ingredients in their feed; we have some that might want to have a lot of insect [feed] because they really believe in insects,” Marianne Koch, sustainability manager at Cargill Aqua Nutrition, told Tech Brew. “The challenge right now is that the industry needs to scale up in order to be able to have those kinds of [insect] levels in the feed.”

Keep reading here.—JM

Since stepping down from his executive chairman role at Alibaba in 2019, Jack Ma has reportedly been on an international fact-finding tour to find solutions for solving food crises.

• According to the WSJ, Ma’s tour has included stops in the Netherlands and Thailand, as well as a tour of Japan’s Aquaculture Research Institute at Kindai University, where researchers have been farming bluefin tuna.
• Farming bluefin tuna could help provide a stable supply of a valuable and critical ingredient in sushi and Japanese cuisine, per the WSJ.

Ma’s Japan pit stop is a significant data point in rising global interest in aquaculture innovation, where salmon and trout are farmed as opposed to being fished.

• Startups like Ynsect and Innovafeed breed insects that, in turn, are used as feed for the aquaculture industry.

The largest aquaculture-producing countries in the world are in Asia, and together they account for 91% of global aquaculture production. In 2019, the US freshwater and marine aquaculture industry was valued at an estimated $1.5 billion, per NOAA.—JM

YouTube’s latest ad offering, which will roll out later this summer, aims to answer that question, enabling brands to target Gen Zers based on the songs that are most popular with them at the moment, Nicky Rettke, VP of product management for YouTube ads, told Marketing Brew.

By leveraging AI, YouTube plans to create content packages centered around songs that are trending on YouTube among Gen Zers, Rettke said, enabling advertisers to target that demo based on their current music interests as YouTube continues to expand its audio ad offerings.

How it works: Using “audience signals” from its platform, YouTube is “able to identify the most popular music that’s resonating with Gen Z” across its content, Rettke explained.

• Those tracks will then be featured in packages, which YouTube calls “lineups,” for advertisers buying across YouTube, YouTube Music, and YouTube Shorts.

Keep reading here.—AM

Stat: $500. That’s the seed amount that Gordon E. Moore used to start his entrepreneurial career in microchips. Moore, after whom Moore’s Law is named, became a titan of the semiconductor industry. He recently passed away at 94.

Quote: “The macroeconomy is tough and the world is full of some uncertainty and that’s a real factor for sure and, then, when you zoom in one click, the competitive environment is tough. We have a very aggressive—very aggressive—competitor.”—David Risher, Lyft’s new chief executive, to the WSJ

Read: We’re thumbing through a recent poll conducted by the WSJ and NORC at the University of Chicago, on Americans’ sentiments toward the economy, personal finances, and social values (PDF).

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Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• This AI startup is helping organizations automate video editing
• As steel giants face climate goals, investors focus on decarbonization and emissions
• Spotify’s new AI DJ is bringing the new flavor to your ear