Indigo Ag: 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50

Founders: David Berry, Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Noubar Afeyan
CEO: Ron Hovsepian
Introduced: 2014
Headquarters: Boston
Funding: $1.1 billion (PitchBook)
Valuation: $3.5 billion
Critical technologies: Artificial intelligence, equipment discovering
Sector: Agriculture
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 3 (No. 3 in 2020)

In the entire world background of disruptive forces, prolonged in advance of Silicon Valley existed, agriculture ranks near the best of the checklist. Towns and civilizations depended on breakthroughs in food stuff manufacturing, and over 1000’s of several years, not much has adjusted. Farming and crop production know-how keep on being at the epicenter of human survival and ingenuity.

From straightforward cross-breeding by the “eco-friendly revolution” in high-generate seeds of the 1960s to the genetically modified crops that have taken around fields all-around the world given that the 1990s (and proceed to bring in controversy), engineering on the farm is important to how we feed the billions in the entire world populace, which is anticipated to improve by a billion additional in the ten years ahead. The hottest agtech efforts reflect a planet that is regularly in have to have of new and much better crop techniques.

Indigo Ag provides to the farmer the ability of microbiology and know-how to make agriculture a far more sustainable and rewarding enterprise. Its main seed tech is a non-GMO treatment for corn, wheat, soybeans, rice and cotton which can increase yields even though providing other gains, this kind of as lessening water and nitrogen fertilizer use, as nicely as cutting down use of fungicides and other chemical compounds, chopping expenditures and environmental effect.

The business has pushed additional into weather technological innovation and greenhouse gas emissions reduction, raising 2020’s largest agtech enterprise cash, over $500 million, including a massive spherical to assistance farmers seize carbon and market carbon credits. In the U.S., agriculture is the fifth-premier resource of carbon emissions amongst financial sectors, representing 10% of greenhouse gases from business (however that include livestock functions).

Indigo Ag’s ambitions are common. It uses satellite imagery to monitor fields, soil problems and the temperature from place, and info analytics to interpret that “residing map of the world’s foodstuff system,” as the organization calls it. Indigo Ag also moved into the crop income market a handful of many years in the past by means of Indigo Marketplace, connecting grain growers with customers inclined to spend for high quality crops.

The pandemic has amplified curiosity in new foodstuff and farming alternatives. Agricultural start-ups captivated $5 billion in venture funding previous year across far more than 400 bargains, in accordance to a recent study from Finistere Ventures and Pitchbook, which includes Indigo Ag’s primary rounds.

Indigo Ag’s board of directors additional a corporate title in 2020 that has grow to be effectively identified inside the previous year for its influence on a switching environment, Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel. Both of those organizations were being incubated by Boston-based Flagship Revolutionary.

There have been some fears that the business is having on much too substantially. Lengthy-time CEO David Perry still left late past calendar year and was replaced by a Flagship Pioneering govt who was on Indigo’s board and served as its main functioning officer, Ron Hovsepian. Soon right before leaving, Perry instructed AgFunder News, “The hardest matter for us is execution,” and he described its operations as definitely being “five startups in a person place. We have to be in a position to take care of all 5 of those even as we are developing definitely speedy.”

—Contributed by Eric Rosenbaum

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