Enko Raises $70M to Commercialize Safe Crop Protection through Machine Learning-based Discovery Technology
27 July 2022 Enko, the crop health company, has announced $70 million in Series C funding, bringing the company’s overall capital raised to date to $140 million. Global agrochemical company Nufarm led the round as part of an expanded partnership to bring innovative products to their core markets.
Enko will use the new funds to advance its product pipeline of crop protection chemistries that target critical pests and weeds through novel pathways. The funds will also expand Enko’s ENKOMPASS technology platform, which combines DNA-encoded library screening with machine learning and structure-based design to quickly find new, better performing and more targeted chemistries. Since its start in 2017, Enko has generated hundreds of leading molecules across all categories of crop protection. Enko’s product pipeline is currently led by a range of herbicides that are demonstrating breakthrough performance compared to industry standards like glyphosate.
“Reliance on outdated chemistries has led to rampant resistance that is threatening farmer livelihoods and our food supply,” said Enko CEO and founder Jacqueline Heard. “Enko’s digital platform massively increases the scale and discovery rate for new solutions, screening out off-target organisms from the get-go. The result is bringing safe and effective products to growers better, faster and cheaper. The need for this innovation has never been more urgent.”
To move the industry forward amidst stalled R&D, Enko is collaborating with Syngenta and Bayer on promising new chemistries. Enko’s target-based approach has generated its industry-leading discoveries in roughly half the time and with fewer resources than conventional R&D methods.
On expanding their partnership, Nufarm Managing Director and CEO Greg Hunt said, “We were early investors in Enko and have followed the performance of their pipeline in the lab and field over the last two years with increased interest. As an agricultural innovator, Nufarm’s strategy is to partner with like-minded companies who recognize that innovation and technology are the future for sustainable agriculture practices. We were delighted to invest in this Series C financing round.”
In addition to Nufarm, its investors include Anterra Capital, Taher Gozal, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Eight Roads Ventures, Finistere Ventures, Novalis LifeSciences, Germin8 Ventures, TO Ventures Food, Endeavor8, Alumni Ventures Group and Rabo Food & Agri Innovation Fund.
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