Participated · Seed · Mar 2022

Leaf is a New York–based startup that ingests farms' unstructured data, standardizes it, and serves it through an API to customers such as crop insurance providers and agtech companies. The company charges customers based on how many acres their data is harvested from and now works with more than 80 companies, including Bayer and Syngenta. Leaf began selling in mid-2021 after reverse-engineering many farm data file types to build its infrastructure layer. The startup recently raised an $11.3 million Series A and plans to use the capital to build out a commercial go-to-market team and scale sales beyond the CEO. Product plans include improving data quality and accuracy to support customers using the data as inputs for AI prediction models. Leaf is also exploring end-to-end offerings that could replace cloud providers for some customers. Based in Los Angeles, Leaf builds a unified farm-data API that lets developers send and receive user-permissioned agricultural data in a consistent, standardized way. Its API is used across use cases including carbon and sustainability tracking, farm management, lending and insurance, biotech, marketplaces, agronomy, traceability, and maintenance forecasting. Companies representing over 200 million acres are already using Leaf’s platform to build and scale products. Leaf says its product eliminates the need to build and maintain multiple integrations and backend infrastructure, accelerating product development timelines. The company raised $5 million in seed financing and plans to use the capital to grow its commercial, customer success, and development teams globally. Leaf also intends to add support for new data types and launch new services such as Field Operations to expand its offerings. Leaf provides a developer-focused API network that connects apps and services to farm data from equipment, sensors, and software platforms. Developers use Leaf’s API to build and scale products including farm management software, lending products, carbon removal marketplaces, outcome-based financing, input and land marketplaces, traceability applications, and equipment maintenance forecasting. The company says its API supports all major agriculture brands and that hundreds of applications and thousands of end users are built on and using Leaf. Leaf was founded in 2018 with a mission to lower barriers to entry in food and agriculture technology by providing developer-friendly farm data infrastructure. The startup raised a $2 million seed round to enhance its products, grow the team, expand its integration network, and engage international markets. Leaf positions itself as infrastructure to improve farmer profitability, environmental outcomes, and accessibility across the food system.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2021

Full Harvest operates a B2B produce marketplace that digitizes the produce supply chain, using a spot marketplace, matching algorithm and visibility tools to connect buyers and sellers of surplus and imperfect crops. The platform includes a third-party audit and verification process to standardize specifications and reduce rejection rates to 1–2% versus a 10% industry average. The company takes a percentage of every transaction on its marketplace; it tripled revenue between 2020 and 2021 and has grown from about eight employees in 2018 to 35. Full Harvest has expanded geographically, including into Canada, and has hit a milestone of 50 million pounds sold. With new capital the company plans to invest in technology development, triple the size of its technology and product teams in 2022, expand its North American footprint, pursue logistics-technology partnerships and advance data and market-insights offerings such as availability, pricing, specifications, quality and forecasting. Full Harvest is a San Francisco-based B2B marketplace that connects large-scale vegetable and fruit farms with commercial buyers such as retail juice franchises to sell excess or imperfect produce. The company targets vegetable farms greater than 1,000 acres and fruit farms larger than 100 acres and has developed quality standards to standardize transactions. Full Harvest currently brokers roughly 40 items and focuses on foundational, large-volume produce categories purchased by food and beverage companies. Founder Christine Moseley, a solo female founder with logistics and food-industry experience, started the company after witnessing large on-farm waste. The marketplace aims to reduce food waste while providing incremental revenue to farmers and lower-priced inputs to buyers. The company is scaling its operations following a new Series A raise. Full Harvest, founded by Christine Moseley, operates a marketplace that connects farmers with food makers who will purchase fruit and vegetables rejected by grocers for cosmetic reasons. The company targets buyers such as juice, soup and sauce makers, baby food companies, frozen food producers and pet food manufacturers to create demand for so-called "ugly" produce. Moseley conceived the idea while running business development for Organic Avenue after seeing farmers discard usable leaves and produce to meet retail cosmetic standards. Full Harvest competes with regional food nonprofits like Borderlands Food Bank and startups such as Spoiler Alert that also help divert produce from waste. The startup recently raised $2 million in seed funding and plans to use the proceeds to add features to its platform, expand its team from about 10 to roughly 20 employees, and increase outreach to food industry buyers.

Participated · Series B · Nov 2021

Nuritas uses a proprietary AI and genomics platform called Nπϕ™ (Nuritas Peptide Finder) to predict and unlock bioactive peptides hidden in plants and natural food sources. The company has established what it describes as the world’s largest peptide knowledge base and says its platform identifies new bioactives roughly 10 times faster and with greater accuracy than traditional methods. Nuritas has launched AI-discovered and clinically proven ingredients (PeptAide™ 4, PeptiYouth™, PeptiStrong™) with market entry targeted for early 2022 and has partnerships with Nestle, Mars, Sumitomo Corporation and Pharmavite. The new funding will support global expansion, scaling the platform, expanding the commercial team and building a US headquarters. Nuritas has also grown its advisory board with high-profile industry figures to support commercialization and product development. Nuritas developed a proprietary artificial intelligence platform to identify novel peptides, with in-silico predictions validated by its in-house laboratory and multidisciplinary scientists. The company says its platform can accelerate discovery from concept to market in less than three years and has launched its first product, Peptaide, this year. The new financing is intended to increase and accelerate development of AI and DNA analysis capabilities and to scale up discovery of therapeutics in areas such as anti-aging, anti-inflammatory and diabetes treatment. Nuritas relocated to a 16,000 sq ft Dublin headquarters and signed a 20-year lease with a break at year 10. Financially, the company booked a €1.7m loss in 2017 as headcount rose from 16 to 29, ended the year with €16.5m of cash and had year-end trade debtors of €166,000. Prior to the EIB support the company had raised €16m in private equity through 2017 and received Enterprise Ireland grants (€300,000 in 2016 and €1,100,000 in 2017). Nuritas has built a medical platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyse peptides in food, which the company says is 500 times faster than current technology. The platform targets, predicts and unlocks peptides intended to positively impact conditions such as pre-diabetes, and the company’s primary focus is on diabetes. Nuritas says its AI-discovered inflammation ingredient will launch in the US next year. The company was launched in 2014 and is based in Ireland. Nuritas has now raised €25 million in total and plans to use the new funds to boost global growth and explore applications of its technology for other diseases. CEO Emmet Brown and founder Dr Nora Khaldi have both commented on the platform’s ability to reduce the cost and time needed to find therapeutic peptides. Nuritas develops bioactive peptides discovered using artificial intelligence, and its lead peptide is positioned as a preventive treatment to stop pre-diabetic patients progressing to Type 2 diabetes. The company says the discovery is a major breakthrough and that the peptide carries potential for diabetes prevention. EU Horizon 2020 funding will unlock a total of over €3 million to support the final stage of the research and the commercialisation of the peptide. Funds will support a series of Irish-based clinical trials scheduled to roll out over the next 18 months. Pending regulatory approval, Nuritas plans to integrate the peptide into functional food products and aims for market availability as early as 2020. CEO Emmet Browne framed the funding as validation of Nuritas's AI-driven technology; Dr Nora Khaldi is named as founder and Chief Scientific Officer in the article. Nuritas provides a platform that combines artificial intelligence and DNA sequencing to discover particular molecules—peptides—in natural sources such as food. The company says these peptides have scientifically validated health benefits and has developed and patented ingredients that target issues including inflammation, diabetes, ageing and MRSA. Led by founder Dr. Nora Khaldi and CEO Emmet Browne, Nuritas is commercializing those health-improving ingredients. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate development of its platform. Financially, Nuritas raised $3.2M in funding to support that development, according to the article.

Participated · Series B · Oct 2021

Culture Biosciences is a San Francisco-based company offering an integrated bioprocess development platform that combines automated laboratory hardware with cloud-native software. Its flagship Stratyx 250 system delivers scalable, digitally connected bioprocess capacity for biologics, cell therapy, and other advanced workflows. The accompanying Console software centralizes experimental data, making it accessible and contextualized for R&D teams across locations. The company is augmenting this platform with AI-driven capabilities such as predictive modeling, advanced data integration, and automated analysis tools aimed at shortening development cycles and sharpening process decisions. Culture Biosciences enables customers to run, monitor, and optimize experiments remotely, effectively moving biomanufacturing into the cloud. Proceeds from its latest funding will help roll out the Stratyx 250 commercially while expanding AI features within the Console platform. The article did not provide specific revenue, customer, or usage metrics.

Participated · Series A · Aug 2021

Debut builds an AI-driven ingredient discovery platform to create scientifically-discovered, clinically-proven biotech ingredients and customizable formulations for skincare. The platform can screen upward of 50 billion ingredients and focuses on novel chemical entities that target the 14 hallmarks of aging. Debut's proprietary in-house skin health datasets have achieved 99% data consistency versus 85% in public datasets, improving its predictive capabilities. The company enables beauty brands to outsource formulation innovation at scale, reducing upfront R&D expenses. Debut plans to scale its formulation business in the US and enter Asia beginning in Singapore through partnerships with leading brands. Named one of TIME100 Most Innovative Companies 2025, Debut recently secured $20M to accelerate platform development and commercial expansion. Debut is a vertically integrated synthetic biology company based in San Diego, CA, focused on producing bio-based fragrance and cosmetic bioactive ingredients. Led by founder and CEO Joshua Britton, Ph.D., the company operates an integrated synthetic biology platform and advanced biomanufacturing approaches. Its platform aims to replicate the scent signature and precise characteristics of natural ingredients, including structurally complex and trace compounds that are difficult to source. Debut's advanced biomanufacturing is intended to enable fragrance brands to transition to bio-based formulas while protecting the olfactive integrity of their products. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate development of bio-identical and novel fragrance molecules, opening new creative possibilities for the fragrance industry. Debut Biotech has developed a proprietary cell-free biomanufacturing platform to produce rare, high-value and novel compounds and to improve traditional ingredient manufacturing. The platform has applications across food and wellness products, cosmetics, colors, therapeutics and other industrial uses. The company plans to commercialize ingredients developed on its platform using proceeds from the recent financing. To scale commercialization, Debut will expand into a 26,000 square foot facility in San Diego and triple the size of its team across San Diego and Atlanta. Those facility investments are intended to enable manufacturing to be done entirely in the United States. The company is led by CEO Joshua Britton. Debut Biotechnology develops a cell‑free biomanufacturing platform that combines custom‑designed immobilized enzymes with continuous processes to produce high‑value molecules for pharmaceutical and specialty chemical customers. Its plug‑and‑play enzyme cartridges enable transformation of bio‑renewable materials into therapeutics and specialty chemicals. The company has partnered with two large manufacturers to integrate its platform into existing pipelines. Debut plans to use new funding to support those integrations, expand business development, double its science team and create a pilot production system. The company was founded by Joshua Britton, Greg Wess and Brady Beauchamp and is a UC‑Irvine spinout.