The convergence of artificial intelligence and agricultural biotechnology has reached a critical milestone as London-based startup Biographica announces a $9.4 million seed funding round aimed at transforming how the global agricultural industry develops climate-resilient crops. The financing, which translates to approximately £7 million, positions the company at the forefront of an emerging movement to apply computational biology principles to one of humanity’s most pressing challenges: feeding a growing population amid accelerating climate change.
Founded in 2022 by Cecily Price and Dominic Hall, Biographica has developed a proprietary artificial intelligence platform that addresses what industry experts describe as the “discovery bottleneck” in crop trait development. While technologies like CRISPR have revolutionized the ability to edit genes with precision, identifying which specific genes to modify remains an extraordinarily slow, expensive, and inefficient process that can take more than a decade and cost millions of dollars.
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The Climate Crisis Driving Agricultural Innovation
The urgency behind Biographica’s mission cannot be overstated. Climate change is fundamentally reshaping global agricultural systems, with research indicating that global production could decline by 5.5 × 10^14 kilocalories annually per 1°C of global mean surface temperature rise. This translates to approximately 120 kilocalories per person per day, representing 4.4% of recommended consumption per degree of warming, even when accounting for farmer adaptation strategies.
According to recent projections, global food demand is estimated to increase to feed a projected population of 9.7 billion people by 2050, while the global agrifood system currently emits one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. The World Bank emphasizes that climate-smart agriculture represents one of the most critical pathways to simultaneously boost productivity, enhance resilience, and reduce emissions.
The impacts are already visible across major agricultural regions. Research shows that climate change has caused annual mean temperatures to rise and extreme events to increase in frequency and intensity, leading to changes in water distribution and availability, earlier flowering dates with increased danger of late frosts, longer growing seasons, more frequent crop failures, and increased pest infestations. These cascading effects threaten to undermine decades of progress in global food security.
Traditional crop development methods struggle to keep pace with these rapidly evolving challenges. Developing new crop traits such as drought tolerance, disease resistance, or improved nutrition typically requires more than ten years and substantial investment, with gene identification representing the primary bottleneck. The most expensive and time-consuming challenge lies in identifying which genes control specific crop characteristics—knowledge essential for gene editing and breeding programs.
Biographica’s AI-Driven Solution
Biographica’s platform represents a fundamental departure from conventional approaches to crop trait discovery. The company’s AI system analyzes biological data to identify promising genetic targets in weeks rather than years, providing researchers with precise guidance on what genetic changes to pursue and why. This dramatic acceleration addresses the critical time constraints facing the agricultural industry as climate pressures intensify.
In pilot programs with leading seed and precision breeding companies, Biographica’s platform identified validated gene targets twelve times faster than traditional methods. Beyond speed, the platform demonstrated the ability to uncover novel targets that conventional approaches miss entirely, potentially enabling new high-value traits to reach the market that would otherwise never be discovered.
Dominic Hall, Biographica’s Chief Technology Officer who earned his PhD in computational genomics, explained to AgFunderNews that widely used techniques such as Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) and Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) mapping tend to identify correlations rather than direct causal relationships between genes and traits. The company’s platform aims to bridge this gap by using knowledge graphs, foundation models, and machine learning trained on large, multimodal genomic datasets to analyze gene-gene and gene-trait interactions.
According to Hall, Biographica’s models are “pre-trained on very large corpuses of sequencing and genetics data from the public domain,” then fine-tuned on data that the company collects independently. This approach was deliberately designed to avoid the common industry complaint about companies demanding access to proprietary customer data before demonstrating value. The baseline system uses public data and Biographica-generated laboratory data, supplemented with cross-species data and multimodal information to train the models.
The company is now implementing what it describes as a “lab-in-the-loop model,” inspired by recent advances in pharmaceutical drug discovery. This approach combines AI-driven discovery with rapid experimental validation, creating a self-improving cycle where experimental results continuously feed back into the AI models, allowing them to improve accuracy over time. This methodology has already proven transformative in drug development and holds similar promise for agricultural applications.
Strategic Funding and Investor Confidence
The £7 million funding round was led by Faber VC, a Lisbon-based venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investments at the intersection of science and technology, with particular focus on digital transformation and climate action. The round also attracted participation from SuperSeed, Cardumen Capital, The Helm, EQT Foundation, and Sie Ventures, alongside existing investors including Chalfen Ventures, Entrepreneurs First, Saras Capital, and Ventures Together.
Sofia Santos, Partner at Faber VC, emphasized the strategic importance of the investment: “With climate change intensifying the pressure on agricultural systems, improving crop genetics is the most powerful lever we have to sustainably increase yields and build resilience.” Her statement reflects growing investor recognition that computational approaches to crop improvement represent not just a technological advance, but a fundamental necessity for global food security.
The investment landscape for AI-driven agricultural technology has shown remarkable momentum. In the broader context of European investment activity, Biographica’s funding sits alongside substantial capital flows into related sectors. In the UK alone, Wild Bioscience raised €51 million to advance AI-guided crop variety improvement, underlining strong investor appetite for computational approaches to plant genetics.
Elsewhere in the European agtech ecosystem, Source.ag secured €15.2 million to scale AI software for greenhouse operations, while Switzerland-based Ecorobotix raised €90 million to expand precision farming robotics. Additional investments included SAIA Agrobotics closing a €10 million round for greenhouse robotics, ReSoil raising €4 million for regenerative agriculture projects, SugaROx securing €1.1 million to develop crop-enhancing biostimulants, and Messium raising €3.8 million for satellite-based crop analytics. Collectively, these rounds represent approximately €175 million of disclosed funding moving through AI-driven AgriTech and agri-bio segments in 2025, positioning Biographica’s raise as part of a broader, data-led push to improve crop resilience, productivity, and sustainability across Europe.
Partnership with Global Seed Leader BASF | Nunhems
Concurrent with the funding announcement, Biographica revealed a strategic partnership with BASF | Nunhems, one of the world’s largest seed companies. While specific project details remain confidential, the agreement represents a significant commercial milestone that validates Biographica’s technology within the global seed industry.
BASF’s vegetable seeds business, operating under the Nunhems brand, offers more than 1,200 commercial vegetable seed varieties across approximately 24 crops and maintains a presence in over 100 countries. The company invests 20-25% of revenue into research and development annually, with over one-third of its team dedicated to science and innovation. BASF | Nunhems focuses on advancing traits including drought and heat tolerance, disease resistance, and resource efficiency through breeding programs designed to deliver climate-smart solutions.
This partnership comes as BASF | Nunhems continues expanding its global footprint, recently announcing plans to acquire Noble Seeds Pvt. Ltd. in India to strengthen its position in one of the world’s fastest-growing vegetable seed markets. The collaboration with Biographica aligns with the company’s stated commitment to innovation partnerships that develop new methods and options for sustainable plant breeding.
Cecily Price, CEO of Biographica, contextualized the significance: “We’ve seen AI reshape pharma, turning trial-and-error pipelines into learnable biological systems—and it works. We’re bringing that same discipline to crops. Our partnerships with BASF | Nunhems and other leading seed companies show the industry is ready for AI-first approaches to trait discovery, to bring high-value crop varieties to market in seasons, not decades.”
The partnership model reflects a broader industry shift toward embracing computational technologies. Several early pilots have already progressed into commercial agreements, with targets identified by Biographica’s platform now moving into testing pipelines at partner companies. This progression from proof-of-concept to commercial implementation demonstrates that the technology has moved beyond theoretical promise to practical application.
The Broader Context: AI and CRISPR Convergence
Biographica’s approach exists at the nexus of two transformative technologies: artificial intelligence and CRISPR gene editing. The convergence of these fields has been described by Nobel Prize winner and CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna as having “profound implications” for biotechnology. Doudna emphasized that AI’s capacity to analyze vast genomic datasets accelerates the discovery of more efficient gene-editing tools and enhances the precision of genetic modifications.
CRISPR/Cas systems have emerged as revolutionary tools for precise genetic modifications in crops, offering significant advancements in resilience, yield, and nutritional value, particularly in staple crops like rice and maize. Recent innovations such as prime and base editing, along with the development of novel CRISPR-associated proteins, have significantly improved the specificity, efficiency, and scope of genome editing in agriculture.
The integration of AI with CRISPR addresses several critical challenges. Machine learning models can predict and minimize off-target effects, a major concern in gene editing safety. AI tools help design optimal guide RNAs that target exact genomic locations while avoiding unintended alterations elsewhere in the genome. Additionally, AI-driven models can precisely predict efficient target sites, minimize off-targets, predict editing outcomes, and improve overall efficiency of genome editing in plants.
This technological synergy has enabled remarkable progress in agricultural applications. CRISPR has accelerated improvement of traits such as drought tolerance, nutrient efficiency, and pathogen resistance in crops. In livestock and aquaculture, the technology has enabled disease-resistant pigs and poultry, hornless cattle, and fast-growing, stress-tolerant fish. Engineered microbes are being leveraged to enhance nitrogen fixation and reduce input reliance, creating more sustainable agricultural systems.
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Strategic Use of Funding
The newly raised capital will support multiple strategic initiatives designed to accelerate Biographica’s impact across the agricultural value chain. Primary focus areas include expanding the company’s proprietary data collection infrastructure, which serves as the foundation for training and improving AI models. The funding will also enable extension of the AI platform to cover additional crop traits beyond the current scope, addressing a broader range of agricultural challenges from abiotic stresses like drought and heat to biotic pressures including diseases and pests.
Deepening commercial relationships across the seed industry represents another critical investment area. The company plans to scale its partnerships beyond the current collaborations with what it describes as “two of the top-five global seed companies.” This expansion strategy aims to bring AI-driven crop improvement capabilities to a wider range of crops and geographic regions, accelerating the global transition to climate-resilient agriculture.
The capital will also support integration of AI-driven discovery with rapid experimental validation capabilities. This “lab-in-the-loop” approach requires significant investment in laboratory infrastructure, high-throughput screening systems, and data integration platforms that can process experimental results and feed insights back into the AI models in real-time.
Market Dynamics and Competitive Landscape
Biographica’s fundraising occurs within a dynamic competitive landscape where multiple approaches to agricultural innovation are attracting significant capital. The company’s focus on AI-driven gene target identification distinguishes it from both traditional breeding programs and from gene-editing companies that focus primarily on the editing process itself rather than target discovery.
The market opportunity is substantial. Traditional methods for developing new crop traits often achieve hit rates below 1%, forcing seed companies to test thousands of genetic edits to identify a single viable trait while potentially overlooking novel genes with high commercial or agronomic value. By dramatically improving both the speed and accuracy of target identification, Biographica addresses a market pain point that affects the entire agricultural value chain from seed companies to farmers to consumers.
The company’s technology also offers advantages in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. While regulations vary by country, many jurisdictions distinguish between transgenic modifications (introducing genes from other species) and non-transgenic edits that could occur naturally or through traditional breeding. Biographica’s ability to identify naturally occurring genetic variations that confer desired traits can help partners navigate these regulatory frameworks more effectively.
Industry acceptance appears robust, with early commercial agreements validating both the technical capabilities and business model. The willingness of major seed companies to partner with an AI-first startup signals a fundamental shift in how the industry approaches innovation. Traditional agricultural companies are increasingly recognizing that computational approaches can complement and enhance their existing breeding expertise rather than replace it.
Technical Innovation and Scientific Foundation
The scientific foundation underlying Biographica’s platform draws from multiple disciplines including genomics, machine learning, computational biology, and plant science. The company’s approach to training AI models reflects sophisticated understanding of both the opportunities and limitations inherent in agricultural genomic data.
Pre-training on large public datasets of sequencing and genetics data provides the models with broad understanding of genetic patterns and relationships. This foundation is then refined through fine-tuning on carefully curated data generated by Biographica’s own laboratory work. The use of cross-species data represents a particularly innovative approach, allowing the system to identify conserved genetic mechanisms that function similarly across different crops.
Multimodal data integration enables the platform to consider multiple types of biological information simultaneously—including genomic sequences, gene expression patterns, protein structures, and phenotypic observations. This holistic approach more closely mirrors how biological systems actually function, where traits emerge from complex interactions across multiple levels of biological organization.
The validation methodology employed by Biographica demonstrates rigorous scientific standards. The company compared results from its platform against gene-trait data that partners had already proven internally through years of traditional research. This benchmarking approach provided objective evidence of the platform’s capabilities and helped establish credibility with potential commercial partners who might otherwise be skeptical of AI-driven approaches.
Climate Resilience and Food Security Imperatives
The broader context for Biographica’s work involves mounting evidence of climate change impacts on global food systems. Recent research published in Nature estimates that in high-emissions scenarios, global yields of calories from staple crops could be 24% lower in 2100 than they would be without climate change, even after accounting for economic development and farmer adaptation.
The impacts vary significantly by region. Projections indicate particularly severe challenges for U.S. agriculture and other current breadbaskets, with some researchers questioning whether the Corn Belt will remain the Corn Belt in a high-warming future. Conversely, certain regions in Canada, China, and Russia may experience agricultural benefits from warming, creating complex geopolitical implications for global food security.
These projections underscore why improving crop genetics represents such a critical intervention point. Unlike many climate adaptation strategies that require ongoing inputs or behavioral changes, genetic improvements to crops become embedded in the seed itself, providing durable climate resilience that multiplies across millions of hectares and billions of plants.
The urgency is compounded by the long development timelines in traditional breeding. Climate conditions are changing faster than conventional breeding programs can respond, creating a widening gap between the traits crops currently possess and the traits they need to thrive in future climates. Biographica’s ability to compress discovery timelines from years to weeks could prove decisive in closing this gap.
Regulatory Considerations and Public Acceptance
The path to widespread deployment of AI-discovered, gene-edited crops involves navigating complex regulatory frameworks that vary significantly across jurisdictions. In some countries, gene-edited crops that contain no foreign DNA face minimal regulatory hurdles, being treated similarly to conventionally bred varieties. Other jurisdictions impose more stringent requirements, requiring extensive safety testing and environmental impact assessments regardless of the editing approach.
Public acceptance represents another critical consideration. While years of scientific research shows that transgenic crops currently on the market are safe to eat, consumer skepticism persists in some markets. Gene editing technologies like CRISPR, particularly when applied to make changes that could occur naturally, may face fewer acceptance challenges than traditional GMO approaches.
Biographica’s focus on identifying genetic targets rather than performing the edits themselves provides some strategic flexibility in this complex landscape. Partners can choose whether to pursue identified targets through gene editing, traditional breeding, or hybrid approaches depending on their specific market requirements and regulatory constraints.
The company’s ability to discover novel genetic variations that exist naturally in wild relatives of crops represents a particularly valuable capability in this context. These naturally occurring variants can often be introduced through conventional breeding or marker-assisted selection, avoiding gene editing altogether while still benefiting from AI-driven discovery.
Future Outlook and Industry Implications
The successful fundraising and commercial partnerships position Biographica to potentially transform how agricultural biotechnology companies approach crop improvement. If the platform delivers on its promise at scale, the implications extend far beyond the company itself to reshape competitive dynamics across the seed industry.
Traditional seed companies have invested billions in breeding programs and accumulated decades of genetic knowledge and germplasm collections. The emergence of AI-driven discovery platforms like Biographica’s raises questions about whether these traditional advantages will remain sufficient or whether computational capabilities become the new competitive differentiator.
The “lab-in-the-loop” model that Biographica is implementing could evolve into an industry-wide approach, similar to how high-throughput screening and computational drug design became standard practices in pharmaceutical development. As the platform continues to improve through iterative learning cycles, the gap between AI-driven and traditional discovery methods may widen further.
Potential expansion opportunities include application to additional crops beyond the current focus areas, extension to traits beyond climate resilience (such as nutritional enhancement or processing characteristics), and potential licensing of the platform technology to partners who wish to operate it internally rather than through collaborative arrangements.
The company’s progress will likely influence investment patterns across agricultural biotechnology. Success could catalyze additional funding for AI-driven agricultural companies, while challenges might temper enthusiasm and redirect capital toward alternative approaches.
Conclusion
Biographica’s £7 million funding round and partnership with BASF | Nunhems represent more than a successful startup financing—they signal a potential inflection point in how humanity approaches the challenge of feeding a growing population on a warming planet. By applying artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate crop trait discovery, the company addresses one of the most fundamental bottlenecks in agricultural innovation.
The convergence of AI and gene editing technologies that Biographica exemplifies may prove as transformative for agriculture as similar convergences have been for pharmaceutical development. With climate change accelerating and traditional breeding methods struggling to keep pace, computational approaches to crop improvement transition from interesting innovations to urgent necessities.
As the company scales its platform, deepens commercial relationships, and continues refining its AI models through the lab-in-the-loop approach, the global agricultural industry will be watching closely. The stakes—global food security in an era of climate disruption—could hardly be higher. Whether Biographica’s approach becomes the new standard for crop development or remains one tool among many, the company has already succeeded in demonstrating that artificial intelligence can meaningfully contribute to solving one of civilization’s most pressing challenges.
The seed has been planted. Now comes the crucial work of cultivation, as Biographica and its partners work to translate AI-driven discoveries into climate-resilient crops growing in fields around the world, feeding billions of people in an uncertain future.
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By: Montel Kamau
Serrari Financial Analyst
12th January, 2026
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