By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media
Buenos Aires, Argentina-based agri-biotech startup Puna Bio, which harnesses living fossils to advance agricultural resilience, has secured a high-profile backer for its mission. Shortly after announcing its Series A, the company has closed the financing round with the addition of a strategic heavyweight, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation will collaborate with Puna Bio to test, refine and deploy its inputs in Africa, where smallholder farmers often face high barriers to accessing climate-smart products. Puna Bio has raised a total of approximately $24.3 million since its founding in 2020, according to CB Insights data.
The foundation’s participation marks its first-ever investment in an Argentine startup, signaling rising confidence in the potential of locally developed agtech to deliver global food security solutions. Puna Bio’s biological inputs, derived from extremophile bacteria native to high-altitude deserts, are engineered to boost crop yields, even under extreme stress such as drought or degraded soils.
The funding will accelerate the global rollout of Puna Bio’s extremophile-based biological inputs—seed treatments designed to bolster yields in degraded or saline soils while reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers. By harnessing the power of microorganisms evolved over billions of years in some of the world’s harshest environments, Puna Bio is advancing nature-based solutions for climate-challenged farming systems.
The Gates Foundation’s involvement signals growing institutional interest in bio-based technologies that can be locally adapted and scaled across emerging markets. Smallholder farmers in developing regions are often left behind when it comes to cutting-edge agtech, as high costs, poor distribution and products geared toward premium markets limit their use. The Gates Foundation’s investment in Puna Bio is working to change that by backing the creation and rollout of extremophile-based biofertilizers and biostimulants designed for sub-Saharan Africa, where affordable, climate-tough tools are desperately needed to ramp up crop yields and restore soils. These smallholders grow most of the food in their communities, yet they’re too often left out of the innovation loop.
“We believe this partnership is deeply aligned with Puna Bio’s mission of ensuring food security at a global scale,” shared Puna Bio CEO and Co-Founder Franco Martínez Levis. “Our science-backed biological inputs, already in use in South America, can boost crop yields in a reliable and cost-effective manner, even in challenging weather conditions. By expanding our efforts to Africa, we aim to scale our impact, improve lives, and contribute to the long-term sustainability of global agriculture.”
The company’s signature technologies include two commercial products: Kunza, formulated for soybeans, cotton and beans, and Kanzama, targeted at wheat and barley. Together, they’ve been deployed on more than 800,000 acres across Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and the U.S. over three seasons so far.
Puna Bio’s platform integrates advanced microbial screening, AI-enhanced formulation and field-level data to deliver inoculants that support plant growth under extreme stress. Company scientists have analyzed over 1,300 extremophile strains sourced from the Argentine Puna—an environment of high UV radiation, intense salinity and extreme altitude—to identify the most effective candidates for crop productivity.
Its biologicals have been shown to improve yields by 10–15 percent in fertile soils while enabling crop growth on marginal or degraded land—an increasingly critical feature as agriculture adapts to climate disruptions and soil degradation.
This latest raise positions Puna Bio at the forefront of a biologicals market experiencing growing investor traction, even amid broader venture pullback. With the support of public and private backers, including a leading multinational ag company and one of the world’s most influential philanthropic organizations, The Gates Foundation, the company now aims to expand its presence in Africa and deepen its impact in Latin America.
The content put forth by Global AgInvesting News and its parent company HighQuest Partners is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. All information or other material herein is not to be construed as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Global AgInvesting and HighQuest Partners are not a fiduciary in any manner, and the reader assumes the sole responsibility of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use of any information or other content on this site.