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.
According to the company, Douxmatok allows food companies to use 40% less sugar in their products while achieving the same level of sweetness, with no aftertaste.
Bayer CropScience and Ginkgo Bioworks, a startup genetically engineering microbes for the flavor, fragrance, and food industries, have partnered with hedge fund Viking Global Investors to invest $100 million in a new, as yet unnamed agtech startup.
MycoTech uses mushrooms and fungi to remove bitter tastes from food and drinks.
Biological pesticide firm Greenlight Biosciences has raised an $18 million Series D round led by led by farmland and agtech fund investor Fall Line Capital.
The company uses a blend of oats, lentils, sunflower seeds, coconut, sesame seeds and has created three flavors of yogurt with no added sugars, while eliminating the waste common in plant-based dairy alternatives such as soy milk.
Distribution of the product will focus on the US, Canada, and Argentina, where NewLeaf has been successfully piloting the product for three years.
Agrible’s suite of products for farmers largely center around the Morning Farm Report, a central dashboard which incorporates a range of data to give farmers field-level information about their farms.
The Bee Corp develops decision support software that monitors conditions inside a commercial beehive, focusing on utilizing commoditized IoT sensors and data science.
Agricultural biotechnology and micropropagation company Phytelligence has raised $6.95 million of a potential $16 million Series B closing August 4.
The company will soon break ground on a 117-acre property in Boynton Beach, Florida, which contains a 55-acre man-made lake where the firm will operate a “de-coupled” aquaponics system.
Descartes Labs has raised an oversubscribed $30 million Series B round led by new investor March Capital, with Cargill, Crosslink Capital, and Cultivian Sandbox also participating.
The Brooklyn-based indoor farming training program and container farm founded by Kimbal Musk, has raised a $5.4 million seed round led by New York-based VC Collaborative Fund, joined by several individual investors.
The raise will support late stage development for several chemical crop enhancement products in the company’s R&D pipeline.
The round sees iUNU come out of stealth for the first time since pivoting from a plasma lighting business to greenhouse tech.
Green Bits, a point of sale software provider for the cannabis industry has raised $2.2 million from Casa Verde Capital, land grant deans defend NAFTA, and no consensus on organic hydroponics.
3Bar creates yield-boosting biologicals delivered in a unique container that allows the user to activate the microbes just before application, increasing the effectiveness of the product.
Cro Pro, which claims to be the first VC-backed insurer to be approved to offer federally-backed policies, aims to promote agtech adoption through unique private, agtech insurance products.
Syngenta Ventures has acquired a minority stake in Premier Crop Systems (PCS), a Des Moines, Iowa based agronomic software tool in a growth equity investment round.
Israeli digital ag startup Prospera has raised a $15 million Series B round for its end-to-end internet of things platform using AI and computer vision for indoor and outdoor farms.
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