Rainbow Crops raises €9.7M to scale AI-powered crop engineering

Belgian agritech startup Rainbow Crops has raised €9.7
million in an oversubscribed seed funding round to advance its crop engineering
platform, expand its application across multiple crops, and grow its scientific
and technical teams. The round was led by Italian venture capital firm LIFTT
and its investment vehicle LIFTT EuroInvest. Existing investors AIF (Agri
Investment Fund), PINC, and VIB also participated, alongside new investors
Corteva, through its Corteva Catalyst investment platform, and Maia Ventures.

Founded to address some of agriculture’s most pressing
challenges, Rainbow Crops develops technologies aimed at accelerating the
creation of higher-performing and more resilient crop varieties. As climate
volatility increases, input costs fluctuate, and regulatory changes support
wider adoption of gene editing technologies, crop developers face growing
pressure to improve productivity and predictability while shortening
development timelines.

To address these challenges, Rainbow Crops has developed
Trait Foundry™, a platform that combines artificial intelligence, multiplex
genome editing, precision breeding, and automated phenotyping. The platform is
designed to identify and evaluate combinations of genetic variants associated
with complex agronomic traits such as yield and stress resilience.

By integrating genome editing with breeding approaches,
Rainbow Crops aims to accelerate the development of improved crop varieties
while enabling the exploration of multi-gene traits at scale. The company has
already demonstrated proof of concept in corn.

The new funding will support the development of the
company’s AI-assisted multiplex genome editing capabilities, the deployment of
its platform across additional crops, and the expansion of its scientific and
technical teams.