US-based crop enhancement technology developer Indigo Agriculture received $175m of convertible equity financing from investors that included courier services provider FedEx yesterday.
The round was also backed by unnamed existing shareholders and was raised alongside $25m in debt financing from financial services firms including Pacific Western Bank.
Indigo markets a range of products to help farmers grow food sustainably while increasing profitability, including microbial crop treatments, an agricultural data platform and a produce shipping service.
The company has also launched the Terraton Initiative, a global program through which it hopes to remove a trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by absorbing it in soil.
The funding will go towards continued international expansion of the company’s Grain Marketplace, an e-commerce platform that connects farmers with buyers of their crops.
Indigo also plans to grow Indigo Carbon, a platform within Terraton Initiative that offers financial incentives to farmers to deploy technologies that make it easier to measure, monitor and verify the levels of carbon dioxide in soil.
FedEx chairman Frederick Smith said: “Indigo and the Terraton Initiative offer promising solutions to address climate change. The sustainability of our environment is a strategic focus area for FedEx, and we look forward to supporting Indigo’s efforts to transform agriculture into a scalable, affordable and immediate approach to reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
Indigo said it has raised approximately $850m in equity and debt financing since it emerged from stealth in 2014 as Symbiota. It was incubated by Flagship Pioneering and the startup foundry’s investment arm, Flagship Ventures, is its founding investor.
The company’s shareholders also include Baillie Gifford, Activant Capital and Alaska Permanent Fund and Investment Corporation of Dubai – sovereign wealth funds for US state Alaska and Dubai – in addition to undisclosed additional investors and members of its management team.
