Amatera, a French biotechnology company founded in 2022, has closed a €6 million seed round co‑led by Demea Sustainable Investment (formerly Demeter) and Oyster Bay Venture Capital, with participation from existing backers PINC, Mudcake and Exceptional Ventures.
The company is developing a proprietary non‑GMO breeding platform that brings together advanced plant cell biology, robotics and artificial intelligence to evaluate traits at the cellular level. By analysing plant cells before they develop into full plants, the system accelerates the identification and prediction of high‑performing traits that would otherwise take years to observe in the field.
This high‑resolution, high‑throughput approach automates some of the most time‑consuming steps in crop breeding. According to the company, the platform can make breeding up to twice as fast and ten times more cost‑effective than conventional methods.
Solving breeding’s biggest bottleneck: screening at scale
One of the most persistent challenges in crop genetics – whether using traditional methods or cutting‑edge technologies like gene editing – is the slow, labour‑intensive process of generating and screening new varieties. Amatera’s approach aims squarely at this bottleneck.
Instead of regenerating thousands of plants just to screen them for desirable traits, Amatera evaluates natural cellular variation early in development, regenerating only the most promising candidates. This significantly cuts timelines, cost and technical risk, especially for perennial crops, which can take decades to breed via conventional pipelines.
“It can take more than 20 years and millions of euros to create a new coffee or wine grape variety with conventional breeding techniques,” said Omar Dekkiche, co‑founder and CEO. “We are accelerating the breeding of perennial crops at a fraction of the cost and time, and our goal is to outpace climate change by dramatically expanding natural variation.”
Target crops: coffee, wine grapes
Amatera first applied its platform to two climate‑sensitive perennial crops: coffee and wine grapes.
Its current focus areas:
- Climate‑resilient coffee: Varieties adapted to higher temperatures and growing pathogen pressure, without sacrificing flavour.
- Disease‑resistant wine grapes: Reducing chemical inputs and supporting the long‑term viability of global wine regions.
With the new funding, the company will expand its platform into row crops and vegetables, scaling its engineering and scientific teams to support the next phase of development.
“This funding enables us to scale our technology from coffee and grapes to the staple crops that feed the world, while industrializing our patented robotics and AI platform,” said Lucie Kriegshauser, co‑founder and CTO.
Driving faster R&D through automation and AI
The new investment will also deepen Amatera’s commercial partnerships with major seed and agrifood companies. The start-up aims to help partners compress R&D timelines, reduce development costs and increase throughput, key priorities as climate volatility places growing pressure on global seed supply chains.
By automating tasks such as plant regeneration, tissue culture and screening, the platform also integrates seamlessly with a range of breeding tools, including gene editing, mutation breeding and doubled haploids.
Investors say Amatera’s approach could reshape how the industry addresses climate‑driven genetic bottlenecks.
“Amatera has developed a highly differentiated platform combining plant biology, automation and AI to address one of agriculture’s most urgent challenges: climate resilience,” said Stéphanie Hillard, investment director at Demea Invest.
“Resilient crops will not be optional in the future,” added Divya Murthy, principal at Oyster Bay. “Amatera is building a scalable technology the industry will increasingly rely on.”
