Serra Ventures Raises Over $45M For Ag Tech Fund

Serra Ventures announced on Friday, January 28, that its latest fund, the Serra Capital Ag Tech Fund, has closed over $45 million in funding commitments.

The team at Serra had tremendous support from nearly 100 Limited Partners, many of which are investors in previous Serra funds, as well as several new investors. The Serra Capital Ag Tech Fund is pleased to have the support of corporate and institutional investors, including Busey Bank, AgriFab, Otterbox, Brandt, Mons Investments, and the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund.

“The Serra team is very encouraged with the great show of support from our core base of limited partners as well as several investors that are new to us,” said Rob Schultz, Managing Partner. “To see the number of institutional investors joining the growing list of Serra limited partners means the world to us. We’re truly grateful.”

The Serra Ventures team has been deeply involved in the Ag Tech category for some time, making its first investments in the space in 2010. The steady increase in quantity and quality of Ag Tech deals in its evaluation pipeline, along with notable exits of other portfolio companies in the space (640 Labs, Label Insight and Agrible), convinced the team to create a standalone fund with the singular focus of agriculture technology and agri-food technology.

The next five to seven years in agriculture will bear witness to perhaps the most significant revolution in the application of technology to the industry’s most serious challenges. The Serra team is reviewing market trends, gathering front-line industry data and considering numerous investment opportunities. Each of these elements is part of constructing the Ag Tech Portfolio in an intentional and thoughtful manner.

“We are seeing exceptional deal flow, as we expected,” commented Dennis Beard, Managing Partner. “In 2021, over $12 billion was invested by venture firms in the ag tech sector, a 137% increase from 2020. This is a great indication of the significant number of high-quality ag tech and agri-food tech companies that are attracting investors.”

Over the course of its initial fund year, Serra made nine portfolio investments:

Barn2Door – Barn2Door is a vertical SaaS platform that helps farmers save time and grow sales by managing inventory online and automating orders across web, social, mobile, and email.

DroneSeed – DroneSeed is paid per acre to plant tree seed vessels after a wildfire -- using heavy-lift drone swarms resulting in the creation of highly-valuable ex-ante carbon credits sold to corporations seeking carbon neutrality.

Earth Optics – Earth Optics uses ground penetrating radar to build a global soil cloud for more sustainable agricultural management, providing revolutionary insights into soil health and management.

Hypercell Technologies – Hypercell believes that the best chance to stop future pandemics in humans is to prevent it by proactivity controlling viruses in production animal reservoirs. Hypercell has developed new tools to control infectious diseases in animals.

iUNU – Connecting plants, facilities, and people through a single interface, iUNU’s product Luna turns commercial greenhouses into precise, predictable, demand-based manufacturers.

Provision Analytics – Provision offers software that uses simple digital forms to automate food safety and advance quality control.

Swarm Engineering – Swarm solves highly-complex, multi-variant food supply chain challenges utilizing SaaS software and open source A.I. algorithms to significantly increase efficiencies and savings.

Veritas Substrates – Veritas Substrates offers proprietary substrates for vertical, indoor and other potted farming methods which results in increased yields and reduced carbon footprint.

Vytelle - Vytelle is developing genetic data and IVF technologies for cattle breeding.

The Serra team is extremely pleased with the current portfolio and will be making additional investments through 2022 and 2023 with the goal of funding at least 25 companies.

Tim Hoerr, CEO and Managing Partner, commented, “Serra has enjoyed a decade of success in venture with a series of multi-sector, early-stage focused funds. As our first sector-specific vehicle, the Serra Capital Ag Tech Fund has resonated profoundly with the investment community. It’s a sector that touches each of our lives every single day. To support the companies that are bringing the most innovative solutions to the most pressing problems in Agriculture and Food is extremely gratifying.”