Agriculture technology business Biome Makers has attracted $4 million of investment to progress its data and AI solutions for promoting soil health.
The Series A funding round led by Seaya Ventures and JME Venture, with input by LocalGlobe, will support the company’s efforts to use data analytics and artificial intelligence to build a biological encyclopaedia of soil and generate actionable information for farmers. Specifically, it will allow Biome Makers to work across more geographical areas and crop types.
“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.”
Aris Xenofontos, from Seaya Ventures, praised the company’s co-founders, Adrián Ferrero (CEO) and Alberto Acedo (CSO), adding: “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. 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.”
