Biographica secures €8 million to accelerate climate-resilient crops
London-based AgTech startup Biographica has raised €8 million (£7 million) to speed the development of climate-resilient, higher-yield and more nutritious crop varieties, as rising temperatures, extreme weather and resource constraints intensify global food security concerns.
The funding round was led by Faber VC, with participation from SuperSeed, Cardumen Capital, The Helm, EQT Foundation and Sie Ventures. Existing backers including Chalfen Ventures, Entrepreneurs First, Nucleus Capital, Dhyan Ventures, Saras Capital and Ventures Together also joined the round. The company said the capital will be used to expand proprietary data collection, extend its AI platform to additional crop traits, and deepen commercial relationships across the seed industry.
Partnership with BASF | Nunhems signals seed-industry pull
Alongside the financing, Biographica announced a new partnership with BASF | Nunhems, a major seed business. The collaboration is intended to help bring AI-driven trait discovery into real-world breeding and gene-editing pipelines—an area where timelines have historically been measured in decades.
“We’ve seen AI reshape pharma, turning trial-and-error pipelines into learnable biological systems – and it works. We’re bringing that same discipline to crops,” said Cecy Price, CEO of Biographica.
Applying drug-discovery playbooks to plant genetics
Founded in 2022, Biographica positions itself at the intersection of agricultural biotechnology and machine learning, applying methods popularised in AI-driven drug discovery to plant genetics. The company was founded by Cecy Price and Dominic Hall, combining backgrounds in genetics, AI and computational biology. Price previously worked on the European launch of a gene-editing therapy, while Hall earned a PhD in computational genomics focused on machine-learning models for gene regulation.
The company argues that the key bottleneck in developing new crop traits—such as drought tolerance, disease resistance or enhanced nutrition—is identifying which genes actually control the desired outcomes. That knowledge then guides breeding programmes and gene-editing work. Traditional discovery approaches can take years, require extensive experimentation and still miss important genetic targets.
Biographica says its proprietary AI platform can narrow down high-probability genetic targets within weeks, with the goal of cutting development timelines by up to five years and reducing R&D costs. In pilots with seed and precision-breeding companies, the startup claims its system identified proven gene targets 12 times faster than conventional methods, while also surfacing novel targets that might be overlooked by standard workflows.
From “AI-only” to lab-in-the-loop
A central part of the company’s approach is what it describes as a lab-in-the-loop model—an iterative cycle that pairs computational predictions with rapid experimental validation, feeding results back into the model to improve performance over time. Similar feedback loops have become a hallmark of modern drug discovery, where machine learning systems are trained not just on historical datasets but on continuous experimental readouts.
“Our partnerships with BASF | Nunhems and other leading seed companies show the industry is ready for AI-first approaches to trait discovery, to bring high-value crop varieties to market in seasons, not decades,” Price said.
Investor interest remains strong in AI-enabled AgTech
Biographica’s round lands amid continued European investment into AI-enabled agriculture and plant science. Several companies across the region have raised capital to apply data-driven methods to the crop value chain—from genetics and trait discovery to greenhouse optimisation, robotics and satellite analytics.
In the UK, Wild Bioscience raised €51 million to advance AI-guided crop variety improvement. Elsewhere, Source.ag secured €15.2 million for AI software supporting greenhouse operations, while Switzerland-based Ecorobotix raised €90 million to expand precision-farming robotics. Additional funding has flowed into greenhouse automation, biological inputs and regenerative agriculture projects, reflecting a broad effort to improve yields and sustainability under climate stress.
Against that backdrop, Biographica is positioning its platform as a core enabler for seed companies and breeders seeking faster, more reliable trait innovation—particularly as climate volatility increases the urgency of resilient genetics.
Backers cite climate pressure and scalability
“With climate change intensifying the pressure on agricultural systems, improving crop genetics is the most powerful lever we have to sustainably increase yields and build resilience,” said Sofia Santos, a partner at Faber VC. “Biographica is redefining how agricultural innovation happens, and this investment round will allow them to scale their impact globally.”
The company said early pilots have progressed into commercial agreements, with Biographica-identified targets already moving into testing pipelines. If those targets translate into field performance, the approach could help seed producers shorten cycles from discovery to product—an advantage in markets where shifting weather patterns can rapidly change what traits are most valuable.
What comes next
With fresh capital and a high-profile industry partnership, Biographica will focus on expanding its data assets, broadening trait coverage and increasing the number of commercial deployments. The near-term test will be whether AI-identified targets consistently translate into measurable agronomic outcomes at scale—a hurdle that has historically separated promising computational biology from durable agricultural products.
Still, the combination of investor momentum, seed-industry engagement and growing climate-driven urgency suggests that AI-driven trait discovery is moving from experimentation toward mainstream adoption in crop development.
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