From PitchBook, March 25:
Plenty, a vertical farming startup backed by SoftBank and Jeff Bezos, entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday.
The move is a blow to the quickly shrinking vertical farming sector. Plenty had raised over $900 million in venture funding—more than the now-defunct Bowery Farming, which was its chief rival.
But its collapse comes as little surprise: The vertical farming sector has sharply declined over the last two years as investors have pulled back and the cost of capital has spiked. Across agtech, the annual total of venture investment has continued to decline year-over-year since its peak in 2021 and is returning to pre-pandemic levels, according to PitchBook data....
....MUCH MORE, including the pivot to strawberries
A couple previous posts from the plague year:
December 2020 - "2-Acre Vertical Farm Run By AI And Robots Out-Produces 720-Acre Flat Farm"
Always keeping in mind that vertical farms are growing the highest-value crops to justify their cost. So no beans or wheat or rice or potatoes or barley or any of the other crops that supply the majority of calories that humans consume....
March 2020 - "SoftBank-Backed Farming Startup Plenty Is In Talks to Raise Cash"
If you are like me, you look back fondly to the days when you woke up hoping to hear about ear rot or vomitoxin in the corn.
But no, it's coronavirus and Softbank for the foreseeable future....
There are dozens and dozens more posts including such hits as:
Former Twitter CFO Joins SoftBank-Backed Farming Startup Plenty
K@W: "Why Venture Capital Likes Modular Farming"
And finally a guy who could have helped the VC's avoid a lot of pain:
Vaclav Smil: "How Much Energy Does It Take to Grow a Tomato?"
