March 16, 2017

The Research Triangle Park, N.C.-based AgTech Accelerator has revealed agtech startup Boragen as its maiden investment. Boragen develops a fungicide that targets fungi to bolster crop yields, all while using a sustainable farming approach. The AgTech Accelerator and its investors are backing the startup with a $10 million Series A investment.

Boragen, whose home base will be located at the AgTech Accelerator’s headquarters at Research Triangle Park, was founded by a group of scientists from MIT, Penn State University, Stanford, and the Scripps Research Institute.  The company owns the intellectual property to a technology that is designed to “mitigate fungicide resistance and reduce the overall amount of chemicals applied per acre,” according to a press release.

“Seventy percent of the world’s crops would be lost were it not for modern-day pesticides,” John Dombrosky, CEO of AgTech Accelerator, who will also serve as CEO of Boragen, told GAI News.

The AgTech Accelerator has so far raised $21.5 million in what Dombrosky described as a flexible fundraising approach. By using this model, investors are able to “flex up” their capital commitment when they identify a startup that looks particularly promising. This is precisely what happened with Boragen.

To back Boragen, the AgTech Accelerator’s high-profile investor partners are bringing additional capital to the table for the $10 million Series A round. As a result, the Boragen investment is barely touching the $21.5 million fund, which will likely be invested over eight to 10 different startups. The accelerator expects to make three to four deals per year.

“These quality investors are eager to find great deals,” said Dombrosky.

The investors include: “Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Bayer, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Elanco Animal Health, Flagship Pioneering, Hatteras Venture Partners, Mountain Group Capital, Pappas Capital and Syngenta Ventures,” according to the press release.

Dombrosky, an agriculture veteran who spent a decade of his career at Syngenta, told GAI News the accelerator was formed to fill a gap in the industry.

“The organizational thesis around the AgTech Accelerator is that there is increasing recognition that large R&D organizations can’t do everything themselves. We saw a trend forming in agriculture. When I was at Syngenta I saw it from the inside out, that external development models are critical to bringing new technologies to agriculture,” said Dombrosky, adding that ag is headed in the direction of the biopharmaceutical industry, which generates a significant amount of its revenue via “externally produced relationships.”

The AgTech Accelerator is a strategic partner of the Seattle-based Accelerator Corp, which invests in the biopharmaceutical industry. In fact, it is the thesis and investment approach at Accelerator Venture that the AgTech Accelerator is modeled after, which is a consequence of the leadership of both ventures observing similar trends and opportunities in biopharma and ag.

Research Tringle Park’s Ag Focus 

The Southeast, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park in particular, might not be the first region that comes to mind for agriculture or agtech. Nonetheless the Tar Heel State’s ag profile is impressive. For instance, agriculture is a leading industry for jobs in North Carolina, second only to military jobs in the state. Meanwhile, North Carolina is a leading U.S. hog producer, second only to the Midwestern state of Iowa, explained Dombrosky

“We’re a prodigious agriculture state. We have amazing knowledge in the Research Triangle Park area with Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C. State. We have an amazing set of knowledge workers and science-based educators. When you have that and a willingness for students to stick around and do things entrepreneurial, that’s where we find an interesting crossover of human health and science education into agriculture,” noted Dombrosky, pointing to the major ag businesses with a presence in the region including Bayer, Novozymes, Syngenta and BASF, to name a few. “We have a very vibrant community of agriculture businesses,” he added.

The Runway

The AgTech Accelerator is only just getting started with the Boragen investment.

“We have a great runway of companies we will be able to form. We are looking broadly across the ag tech value chain. Stay tuned,” said Dombrosky, adding that the next deal will likely be announced in the next month or two.

-Gerelyn Terzo

Gerelyn is a regular contributor to GAI News. She has been writing about institutional investing and asset management for the majority of her career and has developed a focus on agriculture given the global scale of the industry’s relevance and importance