October 3, 2024

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

Venture capitalists have been flocking to the crop protection space of late, and apparently there’s plenty to go around. North Carolina-based Micropep Technologies has clinched a $40 million Series B round, propped up by its latest pair of backers. Micropep’s latest commitments, worth a combined $11 million, came from new investors Corteva via its Corteva Catalyst platform and Sparkfood, whose investments combined with Micropep’s existing lineup of backers buoys the fundraising tally significantly. Since its inception in 2016, Micropep has raised a total of $60 million-plus.

Micropep Technologies CEO Thomas Laurent cheered the achievement in a LinkedIn post, noting that these partnerships are about more than only capital raising: “I’m truly excited to welcome Corteva Agriscience, Ducera Partners and Sparkfood as our newest investors, bringing our Series B total to an impressive $40M!!! These incredible partners join an already stellar team of backers who believe in Micropep’s mission: Sofinnova Partners, IRDI Capital Investissement, Supernova Invest, FMC Corporation, Fall Line Capital, Bpifrance, Zebra Impact Ventures. But it’s about more than funding—these partners bring unmatched expertise in crop protection, go-to-market strategies and financing and scaling businesses. Their knowledge will be crucial as we navigate the exciting road ahead.”

Micropep will direct the proceeds of the round toward supporting the company’s pipeline of sustainable micropeptide solutions via its discovery platform Krisalix for affordable and effective solutions that protect crops against environmental stresses, no easy task. With operations in the U.S. and France, Micropep develops an AI-powered micropeptide platform for crop protection technologies, a process the company likens to finding a needle in the haystack. Micropeptides represent natural molecules encoded in plant genomes, comprising multiple amino acids and resulting in roughly 10 trillion potential combinations to produce peptides that are 10 amino-acids in length.

In a separate fundraising, fellow crop-protection agtech company AgroSpheres just closed a $37 million Series B round led by Zebra Impact Ventures. Payam Pourtaheri, CEO and founder of Charlottesville, Virginia-based AgroSpheres, described the capital injection as a “key investment” to catapault the commercialization of its AgriCell platform, drive an expansion into new markets and deliver sustainable, high-performance crop protection solutions to farmers globally. AgroSpheres’ roster of backers extends to Lewis & Clark AgriFood, Ospraie Ag Science, FMC Corporation, Wilbur-Ellis and Bidra Innovation Ventures. The company celebrated its accomplishment on the Nasdaq jumbotron in New York’s Times Square.

Image courtesy of AgroSpheres on LinkedIn

Chief among the challenges for crop protection is a lack of classification system for product development, as pointed out by Micropep’s Laurent. He shared how unlike the pharmaceutical industry, where drug phases are consistent throughout startup and venture capital communities, the crop protection sector uses multiple terms to discuss the various R&D phases, resulting in confusion and thwarting progress for collaboration and partnership.

However, the tide appears to be changing, owing to a new Ag Playbook published by venture capitalist Paimun Amini designed to guide new businesses along this path. This publication sets out to standardize and make transparent the various phases of product development for crop protection molecule innovation.

In response to his company’s fundraising, Laurent stated, “On the heels of the initial raise of $29 million for this round, this increased investment in Micropep will accelerate our time to market. We are grateful to our incoming investors, Corteva and Sparkfood, for their partnership and confidence in our ability to be a new hope for sustainable agriculture for future generations.”

*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.