Biome Makers lands $4 mln

Biome Makers, which uses advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to analyze the soil’s ecosystem and provide insights to farmers, has secured $4 million in funding. Seaya Ventures and JME Ventures led the round with participation from LocalGlobe.

PRESS RELEASE

Valladolid and Sacramento, 2 August 2019. Biome Makers, a technology company that uses advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence to analyse the soil’s ecosystem and provide actionable data-driven insights to farmers, has closed a $4M financing round led by Seaya Ventures and JME Ventures, with participation by LocalGlobe. The financing will be used to keep the company’s footprint across different geographies (U.S., Europe, Latam) and crop types, as well as its proposition with new offerings, such as an assessment system for agricultural products.

The company was founded by Adrián Ferrero (CEO) and Alberto Acedo (CSO), who have previously co-founded a successful startup in digital healthcare and have a strong scientific background. This is the second financing round for the company as it has previously raised $2M from a group of international investors, including Illumina, the global leading manufacturer of DNA sequencing instruments, through the Illumina Accelerator, Viking Global Investors, a leading US-based investment management firm.

“Soil is the most valuable asset to support life on earth, but we don’t really know how to keep it healthy and global food production suffers from it. We have developed a pioneer technology platform based on DNA sequencing, network-based data analytics and artificial intelligence that allows us to see in the soil what others don’t see. There is a huge opportunity to improve the health and productivity levels of farms globally,” said Adrián Ferrero.

“Our vision is to build a global soil dataset that allows us to partner with the industry to support the development of new biological products for unsolved problems in agriculture,” Adrián added.

“Biome Makers has helped to check soil bioactivity allowing us to optimize our farming practices and increasing its resilience”, said Oscar Renteria, CEO of Renteria Vineyard Management, a leading management company supporting wineries in Napa, and one of Biome Makers’ clients.

Seaya Ventures is one of the leading Venture Capital investors in Spain and Latin America, with 160 million euros under management and a portfolio of more than 20 companies, including Cabify, Glovo and Spotahome.

“Biome Makers have pioneered a technology solution that not just helps farmers manage better their $60B+ spend in agricultural products and maximise their production, but also enables a more sustainable food production value chain. Due to modern agricultural practices, we have lost nearly one third of fertile soil per capita in the last 40 years globally and Adrián,

Alberto and the team have discovered a way to reverse this trend,” said Aris Xenofontos, from Seaya Ventures.

“We are very excited to have the opportunity to join Adrián and Alberto in their journey to build the ‘biological encyclopaedia’ of the soil and we are looking forward to supporting them using our experience with high-growth international businesses,” Aris added.

This investment further validates the focus of Seaya Ventures on sustainability: “Seaya Ventures has invested heavily in urban sustainability with investments in Cabify and MOVO. With this investment we are expanding our sustainability portfolio into the food production value chain as we continue to see great potential in this area,” he added.

For JME Ventures, “This is our first investment in the AgTech space, we are eager to see how Biome Makers will help in finding solutions for better agricultural practices in the coming years.“ As a sector agnostic fund, JME Ventures focuses on companies that can disrupt different industries: “We have previously invested in companies that have changed the value chain of various industries, such as payments (Flywire) and workforce (Job & Talent). We believe Biome Makers could follow the same growth path as these companies.” said Jose Maria Hernanz from JME Ventures.

About Biome Makers
Founded in Silicon Valley and located in US and EU, Biome Makers is a global AgTech company leading the understanding of the soil microbiome for more sustainable and productive agriculture. After starting successfully in vineyards, Biome Makers has expanded its proprietary ecological computing technology to more crops, being able to evaluate the soil bioactivity to improve sustainable food production. Its multidisciplinary team has been awarded worldwide and is working with more than 300 clients to enhance their living soil.

About Seaya Ventures
Based in Madrid, Seaya Ventures has been backing the best entrepreneurs and teams from Spain and Latin America since 2013. Through its focus on a longer-term investment horizon and a more hands-on approach to helping companies grow on both continents, Seaya has become the investor of reference for technology startups in early and growth stages as well as for later stage investors in the US and Asia.

About JME Ventures
Based in Madrid, JME Ventures has invested in over 35 companies across Europe, USA and LatAm, since starting operations in 2012. It is a sector-agnostic venture capital fund with currently €60M AUM. For the last decade, their goal has been to partner with the most brilliant and ambitious Spanish founders to build global cutting-edge companies.

About LocalGlobe
LocalGlobe is a London-based venture capital firm focused on seed investments, primarily in the UK. Backing ambitious founders since 1999 including Transferwise, Zoopla, Improbable, Citymapper, Algolia and Robinhood.