Founded in 2022 by Omar Dekkiche and Lucie Kriegshauser, PhD, Amatera is developing a high-throughput breeding platform that screens individual plant cells in culture to identify desirable genetic variations before regenerating them into full plants. This approach eliminates the costly and time-consuming step of growing all candidate plants, cutting the development cycle for new varieties of perennial crops such as coffee and wine grapes from decades to a few years. The company induces spontaneous, non-GMO genetic variation and then sequences and analyzes the resulting cell lines with robotics and AI to pinpoint traits like disease resistance, climate resilience, and flavor. Early candidates include a “Robustica” coffee combining Robusta resilience with Arabica taste, a naturally caffeine-free Arabica line, and wine grapes resistant to downy mildew and black rot. Amatera licenses finished varieties for perennial crops while offering its platform to seed companies working on annual row and vegetable crops. Proceeds from its latest funding will help scale the technology and secure additional commercial partnerships.

Total raised

$9M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

Mar 2026