Brief: Agrospheres lands additional Series B funding to ‘take a giant leap forward’ in bringing biopesticides to market

• Crop protection solutions provider AgroSpheres has made a final close of its Series B fundraise, bringing total Series B funding to $37 million.
• Zebra Impact Ventures led this latest round through its Regenerative Growth I strategy run in partnership with Mirabaud Asset Management.
• Existing investors Lewis and Clark AgriFood, Ospraie Ag Science Ventures, FMC Ventures, BIDRA Ventures and Cavallo Ventures also participated.
• AgroSpheres will use the new funding to further develop its AgriCell platform, expand into new markets and invest in bio-manufacturing facilities.

Reliable performance can be a major issues when it comes to biologicals and biochemicals. As CropLife’s 2024 Biologicals Survey noted, the industry has “a lack of trust in product performance,” which is the number one reason for lagging adoption rates among alternative crop protection solutions.

Agrospheres’ technology, called AgriCell, forms a protective shell around the solution, physically shielding active ingredients in a pesticide from a range of environmental pressures. The company says this enables superior field performance, and that its products fully biodegrade into organic carbon, nitrogen and phosphate.

“Our technology allows for manufacturing, encapsulation and delivery of that biological pesticide all in one platform,” AgroSpheres cofounder and CEO Payam Pourtaheri told AgFunderNews earlier this year.

The new funding is a follow-on to Series B funding raised earlier this year.

“We believe their breakthrough technology provides the missing link in delivering reliable field performance and opening up new markets for high-performance biopesticides,” noted Lionel Artusio-Payot, managing partner of Zebra Impact Ventures, who also went as far as to call Agrosphere’s tech “one of the most important innovations in crop protection in the last four decades.”

The Series B funding will be “instrumental in accelerating the commercialization of [the] AgriCell platform,” Agrospheres’ CEO and cofounder told AgFunderNews.

Funding will go towards scaling the company’s biomanufacturing capabilities and supporting international product launches, he added.

“This investment enables us to take a giant leap forward in bringing our sustainable, high-performance crop protection solutions to market while expanding into new territories. It’s a significant milestone in our journey to redefine agriculture through nature’s technologies.”