New York-based crop protection company Ascribe Bio raised $12 million in an oversubscribed Series A round co-led by Corteva Catalyst and Acre Venture Partners, as the company gears up to scale its business with the help of forthcoming regulatory approval of its flagship product.
Founded in 2017, Ascribe Bio produces a biofungicide called Phytalix, naturally occurring small molecules from the soil microbiome to boost disease resistance, Gabriel Wilmoth, the company’s chief operating officer, told AgTechNavigator. Phytalix “has a really broad spectrum in terms of both the crops that it can work in and the pathogens that it can help address,” he noted.
The new funding will support the global expansion of Phytalix, which is expected to receive regulatory approval in Brazil for corn and soybean by the end of the year and U.S. authorization to follow, Wilmoth said. Cultivation Capital, Syngenta Group Ventures, Silver Blue, Trailhead Capital, and The Yield Lab also contributed to the latest round of funding.
“From the beginning, we thought of this as a global opportunity, and we work in the U.S. row crop market. We work in Asian rice. We also have a lot of activities down in Brazil,” Wilmoth elaborated.
He added, “We made a strategic decision to try to focus on those broad acre row crops because we felt that is an opportunity where a lot of biologicals are not able to meet the cost pressures that you have for the row crop markets but also where you have the greatest opportunity for environmental impact.”
Is the biological market oversaturated?
Ascribe Bio is scaling its business amid an increasingly crowded biological market, with hundreds of companies competing to gain the attention of a finite number of farmers. Many growers were also stung by poor-performing biologicals in the past.
Ascribe Bio is breaking through the market noise by focusing on what makes the company and product unique, like its ability to “blend easily with existing products,” Wilmoth said. Many ag biological products require a cold chain, so the product “cannot sit on the dash of a pickup truck for a while and tolerate the heat,” he added.
“There is a lot of companies in the space. There is a lot of noise in the market. There is also a lot of even confusion on the part of growers in terms of which [biological] do I choose. So, when we think about that, we step back and say, ‘Well, what is missing. What are the challenges that our product has unique attributes to help overcome,’” he elaborated.
Ascribe Bio is near-term focus is on scaling its business, but the company is building the company with the goal of an eventual exit, Wilmoth admitted.
“Eventually, we are going to be looking for — and our investors are looking for — some opportunity to exit down the road. So, as we scale up, as we go to market, as we show the value of this product, we are not making it too complicated for an acquisition at some point in the future,” Wilmoth elaborated.
He added, “There is going to be a global player where this fits in their portfolio, and it makes a lot of sense, and that is the best opportunity for this technology to have an impact at the global level.”
Corteva Catalyst is central to biological start-up investments in 2025
Corteva’s venture arm, Corteva Catalyst, continues to be at the center of some of the largest biological start-up investments of the year. Earlier this year, Corteva Catalyst invested in Argentina-based seed treatment company Puna Bio, then followed that investment up with helping Brazilian start-up Symbiomics close its Series A round.
On the Ascribe Bio funding, Tom Greene, senior director at Corteva and global leader of Corteva Catalyst, said in a press release: “Ascribe’s approach to biological solutions provides farmers with smart and sustainable choices for disease control. This investment illustrates our ongoing commitment to advancing next generation biological and nature inspired products for growers around the world.”
