40 AgTech Solutions VCs are Looking to Back Next

Could 2025 be a pivotal year for AgTech?

The need to feed a growing global population while combating the escalating climate crisis has never been more urgent.  

AgTech, often seen as a transformative force in reshaping food production and supply chains, is facing mounting challenges in a world of economic uncertainty.

“Despite recent setbacks in obtaining funding (50% decrease over the past year) and market corrections due to disappointing consumer adoption rates, novel agricultural farming and food technologies are essential to meet the growing caloric needs and achieve climate resilience in food systems,” explains Marco Schneider at Clima Now.

As climate impacts intensify and food security issues multiply, the technologies emerging from this field could hold the key to a sustainable future. A quiet revolution is in the making. 

From breakthroughs in precision farming to scalable regenerative practices, 2025 will be a decisive year for AgTech's evolution—and these are the 40 technologies investors are looking to back next.

Breakout solutions include:

🌾 Sustainable Nitrogen
🧪 Biological Alternatives
🚜 Decarbonizing Farm Machines
🧑‍🌾 Decentralized On-Farm Solutions
📈 Enabling Affordable Bio-Scale-Up
☀️ Climate-Resilient Non-GMO Crops
🧬 Genomics for Climate-Resilient Crops
💦 Precision Spraying for Crop Protection
💸 New Financial Solutions for Agriculture
🪨 Biochar and Soil Carbon Sequestration

If you’re fundraising and your startup is working on one or more of these solutions, then reach out to the investors to start discussions today or join us at the HackSummit to meet many of them IRL.

Before we jump in…

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40 Technologies VCs are Looking to Back Next

Nelson Switzer at Climate Innovation Capital

• Sequestering Carbon Permanently: It's all about scale. Sequestering carbon in soil through novel agricultural innovations provides a measurable, permanent, and scalable solution for carbon removal. This approach boosts farm productivity, makes crops more resilient to stress, increases yields, and enhances farmer prosperity—all while efficiently locking away carbon and helping meet critical climate targets.

• Water, Water, Water: It's all about securing the future. Water tech is central to the food-energy-water nexus, with climate at its core. By processing, transporting, and treating existing supplies and unlocking new sources through innovations like desalination and recycling, we can address water scarcity while driving massive decarbonization and supporting global energy, food, and climate goals.

Maelis Carraro at Catalyst Fund

• Precision Agriculture: We’re excited about precision agriculture for its ability to optimize farming with IoT and AI technologies, boosting yields while cutting costs and waste. Startups in this space provide data-driven insights that empower farmers to make smarter, more resilient decisions. These solutions address resource scarcity and environmental concerns, in the growing market for sustainable food production.

• Biochar and Soil Carbon Sequestration: Biochar excites us for its dual role in improving soil health and capturing carbon, unlocking access to carbon credit markets. With rising demand for net-zero solutions, biochar offers a scalable, profitable approach to sustainable agriculture and climate mitigation.

• Alternative Proteins: Alternative proteins are transforming food systems by reducing the environmental impact of traditional farming. We’re particularly excited about insect based protein for animal feed consumption.

Ariel Barack at Ordway Selections

• Drones and Sensors: With the widespread adoption of drones and sensors, a significant opportunity lies in enabling technologies that enhance the collection, analysis, and secure sharing of agricultural data, driving smarter and more efficient farming practices.

• Biological Alternatives: The industry is transitioning from legacy chemical solutions to biological alternatives, particularly in pesticides, paving the way for more sustainable and eco-friendly crop protection. 

• Animal Health: We see untapped potential in animal health, an often-overlooked area that has seen limited innovation over the past decade. By leveraging advancements from human health, we aim to revolutionize care for farm animals, improving both productivity and welfare.

Anna Ottosson at Mudcake

• Technologies Helping Farmers Adapt: Farmers are under growing pressure to deal with rising temperatures, extreme weather, soil degradation, and water shortages. Solutions like smarter crop insurance, precision agriculture, advanced pest control, and yield optimization using hyperspectral data can help farmers adapt and build resilience in uncertain conditions.

• Decarbonizing Farm Machines: Most farmers aren’t replacing their existing tractors and equipment anytime soon, so there is an opportunity to develop low-cost solutions to cut emissions. I’d love to see a startup taking inspiration from Seabound’s work in shipping, focusing on retrofitting existing machinery to make it cleaner and more sustainable.

• New Financial Solutions for Agriculture: Transitioning to sustainable farming and adapting new technologies often means taking short-term financial risks even when it’s proving to be a profitable decision in the long run. I’d love to see more founders focused on finding the incentives and financial models that actually work for farmers.

Romain Diaz at Satgana

• Decentralized On-Farm Solutions: The need to align efforts to localize agricultural inputs and reduce dependency on centralized supply chains will spur innovations like modular fertilizer production, on-site bioenergy generation and small-scale irrigation systems tailored for rural areas will gain funding.

• Genomics for Climate-Resilient Crops: The effects of climate change becoming more and more real will drive investments into startups applying advanced genomics and gene-editing techniques to develop crops that are drought-resistant, salt-tolerant, and optimized for regenerative farming.

• Agri-Robotics and Automation: Companies developing robots for precision weeding, planting, and harvesting will see significant growth as labor shortages, and sustainability pressures and costs pressure increase demand for automation. Autonomous drones for monitoring and spraying will also remain a key area.

Nadine Geiser at World Fund

• Developing Sustainable Biological Solutions for Agriculture, Focusing on Microbial Products: These include biostimulants, which enhance nutrient use efficiency in crops to increase yields with reduced fertilizer inputs, and biocontrol products to protect plants against diseases, insects, and weeds. The goal should be to re-establish the natural soil microbiome and reduce the use of agrochemicals. We are excited about discovery platforms which identify those superorganisms in existing soil.

• Developing Climate-Resilient Non-GMO Crops for Europe: Leveraging AI and advanced plant biotechnologies to create crops that are tolerant to environmental stressors like drought, heat and soil salinity.

• Unlocking the Potential of Small-Scale Farmers with Best-in-Class Inputs, Financing, Insurance, and Training: Closing the yield gap of small holder farmers has multiple advantages: improve the sustainability of a rapidly growing space, improve supply chain resilience for CPGs in a space that is very fragile for climate change and improve the food security of 80% of the population in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Michal Klar at Better Bite Ventures

• Asia Pacific Opportunity: Our region is the source of 42% of global agri-food emissions, with APAC-specific challenges that include decarbonising rice production and solving palm oil deforestation. Innovative startups working on those problems are being created as we speak across the region.

• Boosting Yields and Reducing Fertiliser Emissions: Synthetic fertiliser is responsible for up to 5% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. We are always on the lookout for new solutions for better fertilisers or improving yields, while reducing fertiliser use - from enhanced rock weathering to nanotech biostimulants, bioelectric seed treatment and more.

• Reinventing Algae: Algae has a huge potential range of applications, from food to petrochemicals (including bioplastics). There is one problem - the way it is grown today is too expensive. Startups such as Algenie, are reinventing algae production from ground up, targeting an order of magnitude cost reduction and a whole range of new applications.

Charlie Macdonald at Rubio Impact Ventures

• Data-Driven Biological Inputs: Synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are decimating biodiversity and top-soil 100x faster than they are being regenerated. Yet, sustainable alternatives such as biological inputs have been held back by huge complexity and customisation requirements for efficacy. But with more powerful computation, algorithms, and genome mapping allowing for highly customised, effective solutions to be found cheaply, all of this is changing. I’m interested in data-driven discovery platforms that can identify the right sustainable, biological input - such as pre-biotics, microbes, metabolites, and more - for the right crop at the right time.

• Sustainable Nitrogen: The fertiliser industry produces more emissions than the entire airline industry, driven by Haber-Bosch ammonia (a key carrier of the plant kingdom’s number 1 food: nitrogen) and its cheap but fossil fuel intensive method of production. While the cost curve is steep, there has been a wave of challenger technologies such as green hydrogen to clean up the Haber-Bosch method, electrochemical synthesis, biological catalysts that convert biomass, and nitrogen fixing bacteria that avoids chemical inputs altogether. I’m interested in sustainable fertiliser technologies that have found beachhead markets where they can compete and scale towards price parity while fitting in seamlessly into current farming practices.

• Predictive Fresh Produce Supply Chains: Up to 60% of fresh produce waste happens before fresh produce ever hits retail shelves, driven by long, complex supply chains of players that don’t trust one another with data. However, predictive analytics tools are rapidly improving, allowing growers and intermediaries to optimise where their product should be sold for maximum value (and minimum waste). I’m interested in platforms that leverage software and AI to enable these players to make better decisions and ensure fresh produce gets to its best and highest use.

Marco Schneider at Clima Now

• Precise & Regenerative Farming Practices: Practices such as tech-enabled microbial fertilizers that support plants in fixing nutrients and improving their crop resilience. When paired with AI-backed crop insights for precision fertilization and pest management, these solutions can further significantly enhance farming productivity.

• Farmer Incentivization & Marketplaces: Farmer incentivization is key to driving systemic change, especially in light of growing land-use competition. Digital (AI-enabled) platforms help farmers monitor their land health and create financial reward schemes across various dimensions including carbon sequestration, water management and biodiversity enhancement. These technologies open up new investment opportunities also for businesses seeking to engage in outcome-based contracts with such farmers through marketplaces.

• Digital Twins in Food Development and Agritech: Digital twins create virtual replicas of agricultural systems, enabling the simulation of various conditions without expensive physical testing. This technology allows for virtual assessments of factors like soil types and weather conditions, reducing time and costs in product development while driving precise innovations in farming practices. By integrating real-time data and predictive modeling, digital twins can optimize crop management, livestock monitoring, supply chain processes, or the development of novel foods.

Tiphaine Muepu at Capagro

• AI Applied to Agriculture: AI is a versatile technology, applicable across many industries and has recently gained significant attention, but its use should be purposeful. It’s essential that AI serves a clear objective, particularly in food and agriculture. In agriculture, we’re already seeing its potential in areas like image recognition for monitoring, forecasting, and decision-making. 

• Platform Technologies: many start-ups come up with innovative ways to improve the existing production systems. To increase adoption by industrial players, start-ups need to provide platform technologies with the potential to improve several applications in an industrial player's portfolio. These could be platform technologies to increase crop production, for instance the production of new seeds or new crop protection products or to improve animal production with the potential to develop new treatments to complement antibiotic use.

• Decarbonization: Agriculture is recognized as a sector widely contributing to global warming (~20% of GHG emissions). Corporates from the sector have taken commitments to improve their carbon footprint and are looking for solutions to achieve their goals. Start-ups in the space continue to improve their offers to provide holistic approaches including biodiversity and water as well as to iterate on their business models to find a fit for the market.

Morgan DeFoort at Equator VC

• Green Agrochemicals: A new generation of fertilizers and pesticides that are less environmentally hazardous and produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions is under development. We are eager to learn more about the production of fertilizers via green hydrogen, biostimulants that help plants better absorb nutrients and improve plant health, and biopesticides and other genetic innovations that improve the targeting of pesticides.

• Commodity-focused Agtech Innovation: Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions with the opportunity for business model and technology innovations to help transform value chains. Global commodity value chains in particular provide the scale, economic incentives and reach needed to contribute to global climate goals, while improving Food and Economic Security in Sub Saharan Africa. We are eager to learn more about advancements in agricultural technology such as the development of climate-resilient crop varieties, precision farming techniques / data, value chain traceability, and value-add processing innovations which impact global markets.

Hadar Sutovsky at ICL Group

• Carbon Removal and Sustainability: Soil health is at the heart of sustainable agriculture. Technologies such as biochar application, cover cropping, and regenerative grazing are gaining traction. These practices not only capture carbon but also improve soil fertility, water retention, and biodiversity. Digital platforms equipped with AI and IoT sensors are helping farmers monitor and verify carbon sequestration in real time, making the process scalable and transparent. Bio-based carbon capture solutions innovations like algae-based carbon capture systems and microbial-enhanced soils are also transforming farms into carbon sinks. Agroforestry also captures carbon but also diversifies income streams for farmers through timber, fruits, or nuts. The rise of perennial crops, which sequester more carbon than annual crops, is another promising trend.

• Regenerative Agriculture Technologies: Regenerative agriculture encompasses practices designed to work in harmony with natural ecosystems. Technological Enablers of Regenerative Agriculture across soil monitoring and analytics, regenerative robotics and automation, carbon markets and blockchain integration, microbial and biostimulant innovations and regenerative Ag platforms.

• AI-Driven technologies: As investors we are optimistic and excited about data-driven solutions becoming integral across the agricultural value chain, the combination of analytical AI and gen AI will likely play a key role in shaping the future of the industry. AI use cases add the largest value to core functions, such as R&D and products, marketing and sales, agronomy and sustainability, and operations.

Leonardo Sabo at Mandi Ventures

• AgBiotech: Agricultural biotechnology and crop protection are redefining farming with sustainable solutions. From bioengineered crops that resist drought and pests to bioinputs that replace synthetic chemicals, these innovations are boosting yields while reducing environmental impact. With agriculture under growing pressure to produce more with fewer resources, this sector is paving the way for resilient, eco-friendly food systems.

• AI in Agriculture: Artificial Intelligence in agriculture is at the start of an exciting transformation, with immense potential yet to unfold. Early applications of machine learning, predictive analytics, and autonomous farming with robotics are already making farming smarter, creating efficient, data-driven agriculture that reduces environmental impact and boosts productivity. AI is poised to redefine food & agriculture as these technologies continue to mature.

• Agrifintech: Agrifintech is addressing one of agriculture’s most persistent challenges: access to financial resources. By leveraging technology, this sector is providing farmers with solutions like digital marketplaces, risk management tools, and credit platforms that enable better access to inputs, markets, and capital. The integration of agrifintech with data-driven insights and precision agriculture technologies is opening new opportunities to optimize farming operations and improve financial resilience.

Daniel Skavén Ruben at Solvable Syndicate

• Supply Chain, Data, and Digitization: Agriculture (and indeed the entire food value chain) is one of the least digitized industries. In many cases it’s still run on pen and paper. Information exists but is fragmented in silos. By digitizing the food supply chain incl. agriculture, we can upgrade decision making, cut post-harvest food loss and food waste, save labor, save inputs like fertilizer and pesticides, improve transparency and traceability, enable smarter crop monitoring, enhance animal welfare — it’s a no-brainer. I am excited about how the integration of AI can help improve the upstream part of the food value chain.

• Decarbonizing Agriculture by Addressing Methane: Methane is a relatively short-lived but unfortunately incredibly potent greenhouse gas, responsible for about 15-20% of total global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), and almost half of methane emissions stem from agriculture, especially enteric fermentation from livestock and rice paddies. Methane is a fast-acting warming agent, meaning it’s also one of the fastest and most efficient climate solutions we can pursue. There are plenty of technologies and innovations emerging to address methane emissions from e.g. livestock and rice, such as feed additives and genetic breeding to get lower-emitting cows, to novel rice farming techniques and low-methane rice lines — and much more.

• Tacking Greenhouse Gas Emissions from AgroChemicals: Agrochemicals like fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides, are used in massive quantities in agriculture as they help to boost crop productivity and protect crops from pests, diseases and weeds. But agrochemicals, especially fertilizer, contribute to 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We’re seeing numerous startups trying to address this — working on everything from fossil-free fertilizers and green ammonia, to biofertilizer, biofungicide, and biopesticides, to precision agriculture. And these solutions can often be integrated to get synergistic effects. We still need much more research and investment in this space.

Matteo Leonardi at Grey Silo Ventures

• Soil-tech: with an ever growing population and less land available to produce and grow our foods, companies working on either restoring/preserving soil (no-tillage robotics, genomic analyses, etc) or improving its efficiency (root system improvements, phytoremediation, etc) will draw private investors' interest.

• Scale-up Infrastructure: I have already spoken about this many times, but 2025 will be a key year to elevate interest and funding towards those companies with solutions to help compounds from bio-manufacturing become closer to commodities on a price level.

• "Coffee is the New Cocoa?": We've seen 2024 record highlights in funding rounds towards companies working to replace cocoa in the chocolate equation (Planet A Foods, Voyage Foods, Foreverland Foods, California Cultured, etc) and given the current disruptions in the Brazilian coffee supply chain, this crop (and its alternatives) could trigger just the the same attention as cocoa did in 23-24.

Adrian Friederich at FoodLabs

• Biology’s Fast Lane: Developing bio-based products can take 5-15 years and cost $50 million or (way) more. Tools like AI-driven metabolic modelling, high-throughput screening, and strain optimisation have the potential to accelerate timelines and reduce costs. We’re interested in platforms that enable rapid innovation and unlock new possibilities for functional ingredients, probiotics, and sustainable compounds.

• Adapting to a Hotter, Harsher World: Extreme weather events reach new peaks year-after-year, already creating +$100bn of insured losses annually, and will accelerate to do so going forward. We will not grow the same foods in the same quantities in the next decades. Crops that thrive in harsher conditions, climate-smart farming practices, and technologies that stabilize supply chains are critical areas for innovation. We’re interested in solutions that help food systems adapt to growing uncertainty.

• Enabling Affordable Bio-Scale-Up: Bio-product scale up is imperative but has been a major bottleneck of the overdue Bio Revolution which promises that as much as 60% of the physical inputs to the global economy could be produced biologically. We’re excited about solutions that make scaling synthetic biology faster, cheaper, and more accessible to emerging companies across agriculture, food, material and healthcare industries.

Steve Molino at Clear Current Capital

• Precision Ag: There will always be a never-ending search for improved yields.

• Labor Gaps: Labor gaps have been, and will continue to be, a massive hurdle for growers, so anything that improves automation during the growing process (on farm or within CEA) is of interest

• Optimizing inputs This includes water, fertiliser, pesticides, etc., while maintaining or (possibly) improving yields is not only beneficial for the bottom line, but for the planet and neighbouring ecosystems as well

Ruben Altman at Antom

• Biodiversity as a Driver for Production: Currently mainstream agriculture is still based on monocultures supported by intensive usage of chemicals (or bio-inputs, but monocultures anyway). That is unsustainable in many ways. Luckily science has already demonstrated the relationship between healthy biodiversity and production. I am excited by the many startups that will address different aspects of this transformation: design of multifunctional landscapes, financing of the transition and monitoring of biodiversity, among others.

• AI + Robots: I have mixed feelings about more intensive usage of robots in agriculture, but this is going to be an ongoing trend, and if used correctly, can lead to a more sustainable agriculture.

• Water-Tech: Water will present different challenges in every place: drought, floods, salinisation, hails. There is a need for startups that help agricultures to adapt to the changing weather conditions.

Jonas von den Driesch at SHIFT Invest

• Precision Spraying: Technologies that allow for application of crop protection on a very precise scale by integrating into existing hardware infrastructure has the potential for significant cost and chemicals reduction.

• Replacing Synthetic Ag Inputs: Completely replacing synthetic inputs is even more interesting from an impact perspective but more challenging from a scaling perspective. Companies that focus on, e.g., seed coating and can therefore achieve higher adoption rates by selling to large distributors are interesting.

• Food Waste: While a challenging market from a VC perspective, we remain interested in this topic. It is a no-brainer that a huge potential lies in tackling food waste. We look for companies that can play a role in a meaningful and scalable way.