Unfold’s President and CEO John Purcell said he is bullish on the farming sector, seeing a need for genetics in vertical farming. Bayer’s investment arm, Leaps by Bayer, and Singapore-based investment firm Temasek infused $30 million into the new company. Last week, we also reported on a new company, Unfold, which is focused on vertical farming. “We are focusing on how to change the supply chain, and we believe we are one of the solutions to solve this problem.” “We think this is an interesting time to be in agtech, and we think we are in the right time and right place, especially as there is more attention on food and agtech and a pipeline of investments,” Chizhov said. The company will use the funding to develop its iFarm Growtune tech platform expand into new regions in Eastern and Northern Europe and the Middle East and will experiment with growing strawberries, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, radishes and other crops. IFarm, founded in 2017, has more than 50 ongoing projects with clients in Europe and the Middle East for 2020, Max Chizhov, co-founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News. On Thursday, it announced that Gagarin Capital led its $4 million investment with other investors including Matrix Capital, Impulse VC, IMI.VC and several angel investors. One of the newest is iFarm, a Finland-based startup providing indoor farming technology for growing fresh greens, berries and vegetables. The startup’s products are used in beauty, and food and beverage products. Biodesign startup Geltor brought in $91.3 million in a Series B round in July, led by CPT Capital, to make proteins, such as collagen and elastin, but without animals. The company said the technology increases crop yields, and in turn, farmers’ revenues. Meanwhile, Berkeley-based Pivot Bio announced a $100 million funding round in April, led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Temasek, to scale its microbial nitrogen technology. Day said the San Carlos, California-based company was one of the pioneers in e-commerce models, helping farmers optimize their financial performances by finding demand for supply. One of the largest went to Farmers Business Network, which raised $250 million in Series F funding earlier this month. This year has been particularly busy for the agtech innovation sector, as startups secured both big and small investments. “That is a huge signal from a company making bold moves, saying ‘we want to be a leader in this space,’” Day added. He joined Tyson as president last December from Alphabet’s high-tech incubator X. The meat producer earlier this month promoted Dean Banks to CEO. There is also a shift in legacy food companies thinking digitally. The challenge comes in for tech companies that offer apps meant to save time and increase job productivity, areas that aren’t necessarily needed for farmers, she added. That means that if a startup can show a farmer a product or service that will boost the return on investment-increasing revenue or decreasing costs-the company will have a better chance of making the sale. “At the same time, the dairy farmers were dumping milk because they didn’t have a process in place to massively produce small consumer packaging.”ĭay estimates that global food and agriculture fund managers have about $130 billion in assets under management, which is driving a surge in investments as well as a shift in thinking.įarmers have historically been resistant to change, Day said, but at the end of the day, they are rational business people. “There was a disconnect between demand signals and supply, which is why you saw empty grocery shelves,” she said. In fact, COVID-19 reminded the world about the food supply chain, she added. She said that farming is an area that isn’t typically tech-enabled. 14 of this year, 2020 is poised to repeat or even exceed the previous years.īetter Food Ventures Partner Seana Day began tracking agtech startups more than five years ago. Based on the $2.6 billion already given out as of Aug. In fact, in each of the last two years, venture capitalists invested $4 billion in startups in the agtech space, according to Crunchbase data. Freelance Writers: How To Pitch Crunchbase Newsįarming has been around for thousands of years, but investments and startup activity in agricultural technology, commonly known as “agtech” or “agritech,” have only exploded over the past five years.
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