The Yield Lab, the accelerator program based in St Louis, Missouri, has made three new investments of $100k each in agritech startups joining its 2017 cohort. This takes The Yield Lab’s total investment in agtech startups to $1.8 million across 15 companies since its inception in 2014.
Typically the accelerator selects six companies a year to receive $100k ahead of a year-long program of mentorship, networking, office space, and more, based in St Louis.
The new cohort includes:
- GlucanBio, an early stage company that repurposes non-food biomass into high-value chemicals and biomaterials
- Lean Media, an advertising company targeting rural America with a data management platform powered by agriculture data
- Think.Eat.Live, a company making high-protein, vitamin-rich “super flour” from sunflower seeds.
Also part of this year’s cohort, after The Yield Lab invested midway through last year, is Aptimmune Biologics, a vaccines technology for the swine industry worldwide.
The accelerator is currently finalizing the remaining three investments for 2017’s St Louis cohort, which will also be $100k each initially. The accelerator reserves a further $200k to invest more in some startups if it sees value.
Last year, The Yield Lab added another program to the business in Galway, Ireland. Applications are still open until Feb 13.
The accelerator will pursue a similar model in Ireland, investing €100k in eight to 12 startups over the next two years, providing them with one-on-one mentorship, free workspace, and networking opportunities over a year-long program.
Through the Irish accelerator, Yield Lab hopes to access European deal flow, which was difficult from St. Louis.
“Over the past three years we have reviewed 415 applications from all over the globe,” said Yield Lab managing director Thad Simons. “Finding a way to sustainably feed the world’s growing population is a human issue, and we believe our new cohort will help immensely in the efforts to finding innovative production methods and technologies.”
The Yield Lab was the first accelerator to focus purely on agtech and counts the following companies in its portfolio:
- Precision agriculture tool for permanent crops farmers, and AgFunder alumnus, AGERPoint
- Apse, which has developed technology that will allow the cost-efficient production of RNA for broad acre topical RNAi uses in agriculture.
- Arvegenix, a company producing annual energy crop Pennycress
- S4, the decision support software from Argentina.
- Holganix, a biological soil amendment company
- Terviva, a startup growing Pongamia and processing it for vegetable oil and protein-rich animal feed, also an AgFunder alum.
- Agribody Technologies, a genetics startup promoting crop resistance to disease or stresses.
- AgVoice, a FaceTime for farmers to connect with their advisors in real-time to solve problems in the field.
- BayoTech, a development stage company innovating in the steam methane reforming sector.
- Till Mobile, a supply chain communications company for the developed and developing markets.
- NanoGuard is developing cold plasma technology for the treatment of grains.
To apply for The Yield Lab, Galway, click here.
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