We’re Thrilled to Announce $29 Million in Series B Funding and Unveil KrisalixTM, Our Proprietary Discovery Platform
Authored By: Thomas Laurent, CEO & Founder of Micropep
Today, I’m extremely proud to announce the addition of two new investors to our team: Zebra Impact and BPI Green Venture, joining Micropep’s historical investors Fall Line Capital, FMC Ventures, Supernova Invest, Sofinnova Partners, and IRDI Capital Investissement. Zebra and BPI led our most recent $29M Series B alongside the participation of all our historical investors.
When I co-founded Micropep in 2016, I immediately knew that to succeed, we would have to surround ourselves with a great team of investors not only bringing capital but also experience and support in 3 critical areas: science and biology, agriculture and crop protection, and impact and sustainability. After 3 rounds of funding from Seed to Series B, we now have an incredibly talented team of investors bringing world-leading skills in all these 3 areas: Sofinnova Partner and Supernova for Biotech/DeepTech, Fall Line Capital and FMC Ventures for Agriculture/Crop Protection, and now Zebra impact and BPI Green Ventures for Impact/Sustainability.
Raising capital in 2023-2024 was particularly complicated for many startups. Of course, raising capital is never easy, but the funding environment has been particularly tough for companies in our space. According to the 2024 Investment report from Agfunder, investments dropped by 50% in 2023, hitting its lowest point since 2018. We have seen many great companies trying to raise money in a tough environment finally going down because of lack of funding. This challenging context makes our fundraising event particularly exciting and rewarding for us: it’s a mark of recognition of not only the great achievements made so far by our team but also of the unique potential of Micropep to be a game-changer in the field of “biological 2.0” for crop protection.
Micropeptides, Biologicals 2.0, and the 4th Agricultural Revolution
Farmers urgently need new tools to protect their crops in a more sustainable way. After World War II, farmers were able to continuously increase crop yield to sustain a rapidly growing global food demand. This was made possible by the “3rd Agricultural Revolution,” mostly based on the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the development of genetically modified crops (GMOs). However, after decades of intensive use of chemicals, farmers and consumers started to realize that this model was not sustainable anymore. On top of the chemicals causing environmental issues, pests started to evolve to build resistance against them. Pressured by consumers’ concern, regulatory agencies started to phase out multiple chemical molecules, leaving farmers with fewer and fewer options in their toolbox to effectively and safely protect their crops, all while facing the increasing impact of climate change.
Today, a fourth Agricultural Revolution is underway, with many disruptive technologies in fields such as biotechnologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, and data being implemented in agriculture. The combination of these innovations will certainly change the way farmers cultivate their crops across the globe. In fact, change is already happening, but massive adoption has not happened yet as agriculture is a unique industry with long adoption cycles. But the potential is enormous.
Among these different areas of innovation, Ag Biologicals is probably one of the most active segments, driven by the urgent need of farmers to find alternatives to conventional chemicals. The “Biologicals 2.0” category, which includes new biochemical compounds such as RNA, proteins, and peptides, has a unique potential to provide farmers with a new set of crop protection active ingredients with novel modes of action that leave lower residue and have good compatibility with existing solutions. At Micropep, we decided to become the world expert in “micropeptides” for crop protection.
We define “Micropeptides” as short, natural, linear peptide molecules with different modes of action, including the regulation of specific plant genes or proteins. They can offer a wide range of applications with unparalleled potential for new and safer crop protection active ingredients. Since its creation in 2016, Micropep has built a unique leading position in the micropeptide space for crop protection.
Unveiling KrisalixTM, our proprietary micropeptide discovery platform for sustainable crop protection solutions:
Finding peptides or micropeptide sequences with biological activity is already quite challenging. But the most complicated part is certainly to turn them into functional, easy-to-use, and cost-effective solutions that farmers can afford. KrisalixTM is our answer to this problem: our platform combines machine learning and artificial intelligence to rapidly discover micropeptide molecules with strong efficacy potential; biological screening assays to validate and select the most active ones; formulation science to improve peptide stability and delivery; and proprietary synthetic biology production processes to produce them cheaply. KrisalixTM enables us to look at all these criteria almost simultaneously to select only candidates that can score high on efficacy, safety, cost, and formulation feasibility.
Thanks to KrisalixTM, we are advancing several lead compounds in our pipeline, focusing our efforts on disease and weed control for now. Our lead molecule is a biofungicide micropeptide targeting resistant diseases in soybeans, grapes, and potatoes and will provide farmers in Latin America, the USA, and Europe with a new mode of action to protect these crops against resistant pathogens.
Looking ahead
This new round of funding will help us finalize the regulatory studies of our first micropeptide molecule and continue expanding our pipeline of new micropeptide active ingredients. Our ambition is to become a global provider of new micropeptide active ingredients to our industry, working hand in hand with partners to develop functional formulated solutions, as I believe this is the best way to maximize our impact in the shortest timeframe possible. Stay tuned for more news this year!
Read our press release to learn more.