March 29, 2017

Bio-agtech company, Benson Hill Biosystems, announced it has successfully completed a $25 million Series B co-led by Lewis & Clark Ventures and Prelude Ventures, and including Fall Line Capital, S2G Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, Cultivation Capital, iSelect Fund, Mercury Fund, Middleland Capital, Missouri Technology Corporation, Prolog Ventures, and TechAccel.

Founded in 2012 in response to the global need to produce more food from existing arable acreage with limited inputs, Benson Hill employs cloud biology – the joining of cloud computing, big data analytics, and plant biology – to help advance the genetics of crops at a much faster pace and at a lower cost than traditional methods.

The funding from this round will be used to continue to progress CropOS™ – Benson Hill’s computational platform that uses machine learning in the application of advancing plant genetics with the goal of producing a portfolio of promising outcomes that will provide higher yields without the need for additional inputs.

Plant breeders and researchers can use the data analytics and biological knowledge-base on the CropOS platform to bypass years of experimentation in the search for specific desired traits. The platform’s reliance on machine learning also means that as the number of users, experiments, and data increase, so too will the sophistication of the research capabilities. It also democratizes the process – doing the computational work for agricultural scientists who many times lack experience in drilling down the data.

“We need a new model of innovation that can accelerate crop improvement to meet our global food and energy needs, and we look forward to working with our stakeholders to ensure that Benson Hill delivers on our purpose, creating real change that benefits our industry and society,” Matthew Crisp, CEO and co-founder of Benson Hill told Silicon Prairie News.

“We’re not out to get anybody, we’re out to empower people,” said Crisp. “It’s in many ways analogous to other industries where there’s been disruption that’s occurred by doing things not better than somebody, but by doing things differently, and that’s exactly what we’re focused on.”

New Advancement

Along with the announced Series B, Benson Hill also announced an advancement in its partnership with Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira (CTC) – the leading researcher and development institution focused on sugarcane in Brazil – to develop and commercialize sugarcane traits that will result in increased yields.

Through their partnership forged in 2014, Benson Hill and CTC began collaborating on new traits that would boost photosynthesis and crop biomass in the sugarcane industry, with the goal of strengthening all output aspects of the sugarcane sector – sugar content, straw yield, and ethanol production.

Toward this end, Benson Hill’s CropOS™ platform and proprietary Setaria viridis plant system has been successful in identifying and validating numerous candidates to meet these goals.

“The rigor of Benson Hill’s CropOS system and ability to evaluate selected genes in the model crop Setaria viridis increases the probability of success in sugarcane since the photosynthetic systems of the two plants are very similar,” said William Burnquist, director of R&D at CTC. “We are pleased to have achieved this milestone in our partnership and will soon move forward to the next phase of validating the genes’ efficacy in sugarcane.”

Moving forward, CTC will be able to work to translate these leads into advances in sugarcane breeding to mobilizing the technology for the benefit of farmers.

Ultimately, such advancements in trait development, and the ability to support more players in the plant biology space through this platform should increase the biological innovation brought to the sector, something Matthew Crisp, CEO of Benson Hill, said is, “Frankly, more important than ever to do given the urgency in agriculture today.”

-Lynda Kiernan

Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.