Indigo Ag Is World’S Biggest Agtech Startup

From Nanalyze:

The world’s biggest agtech startup appears poised to grow fifty-fifty bigger this yr alongside a multi-billion-dollar valuation simply iv years later launching out of Boston. (When nosotros say “biggest”, we are using valuation to create upward one's heed “biggest”. Valuation refers to what investors are willing to pay for shares when they invest, in addition to consequently, these valuations volition increase, decrease or rest the same, based on the latest funding round.)

PitchBook Data, a theater that provides research in addition to information on person markets, latterly reported that Indigo silver is looking to heighten upward to $300 million, which would give it a valuation of $3.5 billion. Founded inward 2014, Indigo has already reaped $359 million over 5 rounds (though the terminal was technically a continuation of a Series D that reached $203 meg terminal year), according to Crunchbase. Pitchbook genuinely pegs equity funding slightly higher at $367 million. Either way, Indigo currently carries a $1.4 billion valuation, per both PitchBook in addition to swain information theater CB Insights.

Credit: PitchBook

Timing is everything. About a calendar week later nosotros published our listing of top-funded agtech startups terminal September, Indigo doubled its country of war breast to surpass vertical farming startup Plenty Inc. every bit the world’s virtually well-funded agtech startup. Plenty has raised a sum of $226 million, including a $200 meg circular inward 2017 from free-spending SoftBank. In fact, terminal yr was a skillful 1 for agtech, a broadly defined engineering scientific discipline sector that includes everything from agricultural robots to Internet of Things aquaculture. Pitchbook says a tape of $1.8 billion was invested inward agtech companies terminal yr over 221 deals.

Microbes for Crops
 
 
Riding that moving ridge of investment is Indigo, which produces crop seeds—but non simply whatever seeds. Their seeds are coated alongside microbes, tiny organisms that alive inward a symbiotic human relationship alongside plants in addition to soil, helping them rest salubrious inward less-than-ideal weather such every bit drought. Currently, the companionship focuses on cotton, wheat, rice, corn in addition to soybeans. We showtime profiled Indigo inward our list of agtech startups keeping us fed.
Indigo doesn’t genetically alter the organisms but goes through a complex procedure to notice the best bugs for the job. It uses sophisticated genomic sequencing in addition to other methods to create an enormous database of genomic information for thousands of microbes. The companionship thus applies algorithms in addition to machine learning to predict which microbes are virtually beneficial to the plant’s health. The best in addition to brightest bugs are thus used inward the company’s proprietary seed coatings.

Win for Wheat
Does it genuinely work? Just this calendar month Indigo released the latest yield information for its minute commercial flavor of growing Indigo Wheat (that’s trademarked, past times the way). Across 24 wheat fields inward iii states (Texas, Oklahoma in addition to Kansas), Indigo Wheat yielded thirteen percentage to a greater extent than than its conventional cousin. The numbers are fifty-fifty amend when the researchers accounted for high-stress, low-yield weather similar droughts or intense heat. The average yield, inward that case, was nineteen percentage better.

Credit: Indigo Ag

In 1 of those “meet the farmer” anecdotes, a grower inward Oklahoma said Indigo Wheat yielded 33 bushels per acre (we intend bushel is about equivalent to barrels of beer, but don’t quote us on that), spell everything else on the belongings produced xv to xx bushels per acre. And that was over a flavor that experienced less than 2 inches of pelting over 6 months....MORE