Infarm, a startup that has developed vertical farming technology for grocery stores, restaurants, and local distribution centers to bring fresh and artisan produce closer to consumers, has raised $25 million in Series A funding.
The round was led by London-based VC firm Balderton Capital with participation from TriplePoint Capital, Mons Investments, and previous investors Cherry Ventures, QUADIA, and LocalGlobe. It brings the total raised by the Berlin-based company to \(35 million, including a \)2.5 million grant from the European Commission as part of the Horizon 2020 program.
Infarm says the new capital will be used for international expansion and further developing its 5,000 sqm R&D center in Berlin. This includes bringing its vertical farming system to Paris, London, and Copenhagen, as well as other German cities later this year. The startup is targeting 1,000 farms to be operational across Europe by the end of 2019.
Founded in 2013 by Osnat Michaeli, and brothers Erez and Guy Galonska, Infarm has developed an ‘indoor vertical farming’ system capable of growing anything from herbs, lettuce, and other vegetables, and even fruit. It then places these modular farms in a variety of customer-facing city locations such as grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, and schools, thus enabling the end-customer to actually pick the produce themselves.
The distributed system is designed to be infinitely scalable - simply add more modules, space permitting - whilst the whole thing is cloud-based, meaning the farms can be monitored and controlled from Infarm’s central control center. It’s incredibly data-driven, a combination of IoT, Big Data and cloud analytics akin to ‘Farming-as-a-Service’.
The idea, the founding team told me back in June last year when I profiled the nascent company, isn’t just to produce fresher and better tasting produce and re-introduce forgotten or rare varieties, but to disrupt the supply chain as a whole, which remains inefficient and produces a lot of waste.
In addition to the funding announcement, please note that Techcrunch is hosting an event titled ‘TechCrunch Sessions: AI’ on June 5 in Berkeley, CA. Attendees can hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking.
In conclusion, the innovative Infarm platform is set to redefine urban farming with its advanced vertical farming technology, promising fresher and better tasting produce while redefining the way cities approach food production. The startup aims to bring this revolution to cities as far as Seattle in the United States or Seoul, South Korea with its urban farming network.
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