The fledgling startup industry looks different to other global markets with the vast majority of innovation and investment ($1.7 billion) taking place downstream; but China’s agrifood startup scene has something the US market does not.
Benson Hill Biosystems, the data-led crop genetics discovery and gene editing platform, has raised $60 million in Series C funding in a round led by GV (formerly Google Ventures).
The investment round was led by Viking Global Investors, an American-based hedge fund based in Greenwich, Conn., with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Upfront Ventures and S2G Ventures.
The "precise and predictable outcomes" of Cibus' gene editing technology are "identical to those that could occur in nature, given enough time," argues the company.
ADM’s Cibus Fund was joined by existing investors GreenSoil Investments, the Israeli agrifood tech fund, and Middleland Capital, the family office-backed agrifood tech VC.
Inscripta is building a business based on selling gene-editing tools, such as instruments, reagents, and software, and in order to create a market for these tools, the company is giving away CRISPR enzymes for free.
Food waste-to-fertilizer technology startup WISErg has raised a $19.2 million Series C round, bringing the company’s total fundraising to $56.6 million.
It was an exciting year in farm technology, to say the least, with several exits and record deals set and then overtaken by even larger deals just weeks or months later. Check out the standout deals of 2017.
There are a number of key areas of opportunity for agrifood tech startups in Europe as the support and resources available
to entrepreneurs increases slowly, write Thomas van den Boezem and Louisa Burwood-Taylor.
Early stage investment in agrifood tech startups reached $4.4 billion in the first half of 2017, posting a 6% year-over-year increase reversing the downward trend of 2016 when agrifood tech investing dropped 17% to $6.9 billion from $8.3 billion in 2015.
The company says its technology is transforming poultry production by turning a cost center -- dealing with waste manure -- into a source of fuel, thereby driving farm profitability through reduced energy bills.
Solyent, Thymox, Propel, Hectare Agritech, Smart Earth Seeds, Taranis, Abundant, Calysta, Ceres, and Territory have all raised funding in the past two weeks.
Air seeding technology brought new scale and efficiencies to farming when it was first introduced, but there are several drawbacks, according to Graeme Lempriere, CEO of Clean Seed.
A bumper two weeks of funding saw 14 startups raise $184m across on-farm biotech, biotech, satellite imagery, India, 3D printing, including Instacart's $400m Series D. There was also an ag data acquisition in the UK.
The round was co-led by Google’s venture arm GV and San Francisco-based impact investor DBL Partners as FBN builds out its procurement, financing and data-driven analytics tools for farmers.
