Norwich, United Kingdom
June 17, 2024
The TraitSeq team and Deeptech Seed Fund celebrating the success of their pre-seed funding L-R: Pearse Coyle (Deeptech Seed Fund), Prof Anthony Hall, Dr Joshua Colmer, John Bloomer, Dr Felicity Knowles (all TraitSeq), Prof Neil Hall (Earlham Institute).
TraitSeq, an agri-biotech company that accelerates the development of agricultural technologies and inputs through the use of their proprietary AI-based platform, has successfully closed a pre-seed equity funding round from a committed group of investors.
TraitSeq leverages cutting-edge machine learning and RNA-Seq data to predict complex phenotypic traits, empowering agritech companies to make informed, data-driven decisions. Their platform supports breeders, biotechs, and agrochemical researchers in predicting gene by environment and treatment by environment interactions, ensuring faster and more cost-effective development of future agricultural products.
The pre-seed round was led by Deeptech Seed Fund, an early-stage venture capital investor, with participation from the QUBIS Innovation Fund, as well as five strategic angel investors.
With significant revenue from current customers and grant funding, this investment will accelerate TraitSeq’s growth and innovation by expanding the technology development and delivery team. Additionally, it will increase commercial capacity, enabling more commercial pilot projects with customers while strengthening TraitSeq’s commercial offering and customer pipeline.
Dr Joshua Colmer, CEO and Co-Founder of TraitSeq, said: “We are delighted to have successfully raised our pre-seed round and are grateful to TraitSeq’s investors for believing in our mission to enhance agricultural productivity and efficiency through our innovative technology. Each investor brings immense strategic value beyond their financial contribution, and we are excited to welcome them on our collaborative journey ahead.”
Pearse Coyle, Founder of Deeptech Seed Fund, said, “We are very excited to be backing the TraitSeq team, our first deal arising from a spinout that used the Deeptech Seed Fund Scorecard at their incubator, the excellent ICURe programme from Innovate UK.”
Bronagh Duggan, Senior Manager to the QUBIS Innovation Fund at Sapphire Capital Partners LLP, said, “We are excited to support TraitSeq as they navigate this important stage of their expansion. Their technology and talented team demonstrate great potential. We are eager to play a part in their success and see the meaningful influence they will have on the agricultural sector.”
Steve Sprieser, Agritech Advisor and Angel Investor, said: “As a plant scientist by training, I’ve seen firsthand the obstacles the sector faces, from maize farmers in the USA to cocoa farmers in West Africa. I invested in TraitSeq because it puts breeders, biotechs, and agrochemical researchers in the driver’s seat, giving them the tools they need to define and target the traits of tomorrow’s food systems. In addition to a team with deep technical and commercial knowledge, the pipeline of partners speaks volumes to TraitSeq’s capabilities and market readiness. I’m excited to watch TraitSeq empower agritech companies to accelerate the development of new plant varieties and inputs from lab to field to market.”
TraitSeq’s enlarged technical team will drive the development of a state-of-the-art, cloud-based platform that empowers agritech companies to make informed, data-driven decisions, with commercial testing anticipated in 2025.
The additional commercial capacity will build on TraitSeq’s existing commercial traction, further developing long-term relationships with industry leaders. This will ensure TraitSeq’s technology reaches its full market potential and will solidify TraitSeq’s position as a first mover in the industry.
About TraitSeq Ltd (www.TraitSeq.com)
TraitSeq Ltd was co-founded in 2023 by Dr Joshua Colmer, Professor Anthony Hall, and Mr John Bloomer, as a spin-out from the Earlham Institute, with Dr Felicity Knowles joining shortly after as a co-founder, alongside founding employees Dr Vignesh Dhandapani and Dr Benedict Coombes. They apply cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) to accurately predict complex agricultural traits, accelerating the development of high-yielding and climate-resilient crop varieties, animal breeds, agrochemical and biological inputs, and gene edits that are critical to global food security and sustainable food production.
TraitSeq is a low-cost, high-throughput, platform technology that uses bespoke machine learning methods to identify biomarkers that are utilised for training trait prediction models in agriculture. TraitSeq’s trait prediction models achieve beyond state-of-the-art levels of accuracy and can incorporate environmental variation – enabling highly accurate trait performance predictions in the field.
About Deeptech Seed Fund (Deeptech Seed Fund – investment in research based spinouts)
Deeptech Seed Fund is a multi-stage investor that invests early in new ventures that have achieved a significant breakthrough in technology/science and now wish to exploit a global commercial opportunity.
About Sapphire Capital Partners LLP (Sapphire Capital Partners LLP – Investment Managers across a wide-range of industries)
Sapphire is a multi-award-winning investment management firm authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Sapphire manages over 50+ funds across a range of industries and sectors including deep tech, agri-tech and more.
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