Participated · Series B · Jan 2023

EarthOptics leverages advances in soil-sensing technologies, genomics, and data science to deliver predictive insights into chemical, physical, and biological soil properties. It combines lab-based analysis with field-based sensors to give farmers and ranchers actionable recommendations to optimize spending and unlock sustainable farming opportunities. The company completed a strategic merger with Pattern Ag, combining EarthOptics’ proprietary field-based sensing technologies with Pattern Ag’s lab-based analysis to offer comprehensive soil data. Led by CEO Lars Dyrud, EarthOptics operates offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Emeryville, California; Arlington and Blacksburg, Virginia; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and maintains two laboratories in Emeryville and Memphis, Tennessee. The company intends to use new funding to accelerate technological innovation, broaden its geographic reach, and consolidate its position as an authoritative source for soil insights. EarthOptics develops next-generation soil-sensing technologies that combine ground-based sensors, satellites, physical soil samples, machine learning models, and agronomic expertise to deliver detailed soil measurements. The company's platform provides insights to help farmers optimize fertilizer applications, inform tillage decisions, and quantify carbon sequestration. EarthOptics plans to use its latest funding to expand access to its tools and deliver hyper-accurate soil insights. Founded in 2018 and based in Arlington, VA, the company serves growers and ranchers seeking data-driven land-management decisions. The company is led by CEO Lars Dyrud. The article reports a recent financing that will support its growth and product expansion efforts. EarthOptics has developed an imaging suite that uses ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic induction to produce deep maps of soil physical and chemical composition. Its commercial products, GroundOwl and C-Mapper (C for carbon), reconcile no-contact sensor data with traditional lab samples via machine learning trained on tens of thousands of ground-truth measurements. The hardware can be mounted on ordinary tractors or trucks and pulls readings every few feet, reducing physical sampling from hundreds of samples to dozens. The company’s outputs can be used to create meter-scale treatment maps or to feed variable-depth robotic field machinery such as smart tillers. Management positions the product as a cheaper, faster, and more precise alternative to traditional soil sampling and as foundational data for automated and robotic farming. Financially, EarthOptics raised a $10.3M A round to scale its two existing products and to develop a moisture-mapping product.

Participated · Series C · Jul 2022

Enko develops crop protection chemistries by applying drug discovery and development approaches from pharma to agriculture. Its pipeline is currently led by a range of herbicides designed to break cycles of weed and pest resistance and to reduce environmental load versus current solutions. Since its founding in 2017, the company has generated hundreds of leading molecules across crop protection categories via its ENKOMPASS™ platform. ENKOMPASS combines DNA-encoded library screening with machine learning and structure-based design to accelerate discovery of targeted chemistries. Led by CEO Jacqueline Heard, Enko intends to advance its product pipeline to address large-scale global food security challenges. The company recently completed a financing that increased its total capital raised to date. Enko develops crop protection chemistries and technology for faster, targeted discovery by applying pharma drug discovery and development approaches to agriculture. Its core product work centers on crop protection chemistries—particularly herbicides—developed via its ENKOMPASSTM technology platform, which combines DNA-encoded library screening with machine learning and structure-based design. Since its founding in 2017, the company has generated hundreds of leading molecules across all categories of crop protection, and its pipeline is currently led by herbicides demonstrating breakthrough performance compared with industry standards like glyphosate. The company plans to use new capital to advance its pipeline of chemistries targeting critical pests and weeds through novel pathways and to expand the ENKOMPASSTM platform to accelerate discovery of targeted chemistries. Enko is collaborating with Syngenta and Bayer on promising new chemistries. Financially, Enko has raised $140M to date following a $70M Series C. Enko Chem adapts drug-discovery processes and predictive analytics from human pharmaceuticals to advance under-developed modes of action for crop protection. The company seeks to identify and develop targeted compounds for validated modes of action, improving early insight into toxicity and success probability. Enko aims to increase discovery strike-rates, reduce time and cost to bring innovations to market, and advance its first solutions into field testing and regulatory trials. Founded via incubation at Anterra Capital in 2017 and led by founder and CEO Jacqueline Heard, the company emerged from stealth with a focus on translating pharma tools to plant science. Enko also emphasizes broad accessibility, aiming to make new technologies available more rapidly and affordably to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2021

30MHz builds a plug-and-play hardware and software data platform for the agricultural sector that analyses in-field monitoring devices, climate computers, sensors and manual input to give growers actionable insights. The platform visualizes data and connects farmers, growers, advisers, distributors and researchers to enable remote monitoring and management of crops. It is designed to be simple, highly-customisable and independent of growers' existing systems, aiming to democratise agronomic data. The company says customers use the data to increase yield, reduce losses, optimise irrigation, improve storage, prevent disease risk and reduce energy consumption. 30MHz will use the €6.5M raised in its second funding round to accelerate technological developments and further expand its role as a connector to support global climate and sustainability goals. Founded in 2014 and based in Amsterdam, the scale-up employs 35 people and serves more than 330 customers in 30 countries; it previously raised €3.5M in a Series A in early 2019 to focus on scale.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2021

BeeHero provides a subscription Precision Pollination as a Service (PPaaS) that deploys proprietary in-hive and in-field sensors to collect audio and biological data, analyzed with machine learning to deliver actionable insights to growers and beekeepers. The platform enables growers to optimize crop yields and quality by monitoring pollination effectiveness and offers beekeepers visibility into hive health. BeeHero manages over 200,000 hives across five continents and records 10 million signals daily. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in California with R&D in Tel Aviv and employs about 60 people. Financially, BeeHero has reported revenue growth of over 270% year-over-year for the past three years and surpassed $44 million ARR in 2023; it has attracted $64 million in funding to date and receives grants from the Israel Innovation Authority, EU Horizon 2020, BIRD and others. Future plans cited include premium beekeeper solutions such as insurance and working capital, and bee-pollinated commodities price-risk hedging products based on its data. BeeHero offers a Precision-Pollination-as-a-Service platform that uses advanced data analytics, machine learning, and low-cost IoT sensors to bring transparency and efficiency to commercial crop pollination. The company has built what it describes as the world’s largest bee and pollination dataset to optimize pollination and improve crop yields. BeeHero enables commercial beekeepers to remotely track and monitor apiaries and provides growers with real-time insights to support decision-making. The company reports close to 100 thousand acres of high-value crops currently pollinated with its service and has begun expansion into Australia, Europe, South Africa, and South America. BeeHero plans to integrate new platform tools for an even more accurate, real-time view of crop development and is increasing investment in R&D. To date the company has raised $64M and intends to use new funding to accelerate growth and adoption of its Sustainable Agriculture Ecosystem. BeeHero equips honeybee hives with IoT sensors and analytics to track bee movements and health in near real time, enabling early detection of issues like mite infestations. Its platform aims to increase crop yields and hive health while reducing labor by replacing infrequent manual hive checks. BeeHero works with several top almond growers in California and expects to manage 100,000 hives by year-end, aiming to become the largest pollination provider in the U.S. (it is currently the fourth largest). The company plans to expand beyond almonds and the U.S. into berries, avocados, apples, sunflower, soybeans and greenhouse crops like tomatoes, with Australia and Europe on the roadmap depending on partnerships. BeeHero is building a large bee-activity database and has research partnerships with the World Bee Project and Japan’s Ministry of Culture. Financially, BeeHero recently raised a $15 million Series A and won $4 million in grants to fund scaling and international expansion. BeeHero equips honeybee hives with off-the-shelf sensors (temperature, humidity, sound, accelerometer), pollen traps, and computer vision to monitor colony health and pollination efficiency and surface insights via an online dashboard. The platform provides early warnings for issues like mite infestations and aims to reduce colony collapse by delivering actionable insights (e.g., queen stress, pollination quality) rather than raw data. The company reports testing on nearly 20,000 hives and cites yield improvements of 30–35% in soybeans and 70–100% in apples and cashews in South America, as well as mortality reductions of 20–25% in some cases. BeeHero positions its service as “pollination as a service” for large-scale agriculture and is focused on expanding operations into the U.S., targeting high-adoption precision-agriculture segments such as California almonds. It emphasizes low-cost, robust hardware and ongoing R&D, exploring additional crops, improved metrics, and partnerships with universities to apply hive data in academic studies. The company has completed a $4M seed financing to support expansion and continued product development.

Led · Series A · Jul 2021

Aromyx applies biotechnology and data science to capture and digitize sensory information from human olfactory and taste receptors, creating quantitative representations of smell and taste. The company has built a proprietary platform and the largest database of human receptors, ingredients/chemicals and word descriptors to test products and ingredients against these receptors. Its products and services are used by multiple Fortune 500 companies across food & beverage, CPG, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Aromyx provides direct testing services, data analysis, and software tools to help customers design products, target demographics, forecast trends and improve sustainability and health outcomes. The company tested over 100 products in 2020 and was on track to more than triple that number in 2021 as capacity ramps up. Planned uses of the Series A proceeds include increasing capacity and automation, generating more data, improving AI algorithms, and expanding lab and software teams to meet growing demand. Aromyx applies biotechnology and data science to capture sensory data, using biological receptors from the human nose to create digital representations of smell. Its EssenceChip™ is a biosensor that scientifically records flavors and fragrances with reproducible results for real-world environments. The company's Allegory Database™ provides a basis for machine learning analysis of flavors and fragrances. Aromyx's products and services are in use at several Fortune 500 companies across pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food & beverage and consumer packaged goods. The company is led by newly appointed CEO Dr. Josh Silverman and founder/chairman Chris Hanson. Aromyx closed a $3M seed financing round and intends to use the funds to grow the scientific team and continue executing technology development projects. Aromyx develops technologies to enable scientific, reproducible measurement and digitization of taste and scent, centered on its EssenceChip disposable biosensor. The EssenceChip places human taste and olfactory receptors into a biochip for measurement and digitization. The platform is targeted at food and beverage, flavor and fragrance, consumer packaged goods, chemical and agricultural industries. The company was founded by Chris Hanson and was incubated at Stanford’s StartX accelerator and the Plug and Play Ventures Materials program. Aromyx is raising $3.6M in growth capital on Propel(x)’s platform. It is currently in advanced negotiations with some of the largest consumer packaged goods companies.