Vancouver-based Miraterra is accelerating the commercialisation of its technology with the help of $16 million CAD in seed funding, allowing the agtech start-up to piece together its various capabilities into a singular offering, Nate Kelly, company CEO, told AgTechNavigator.
With the goal of initially raising $13.9 million CAD, Miraterra’s oversubscribed seed round was led by At One Ventures and included follow-on funding from Farm Credit Canada (FCC) and financing from S2G Investments, iSelect, and the Sitka Foundation, the company shared in a press release.
Miraterra developed a non-chemical process to analyse the chemistry of soils through the use of Raman spectroscopy, multiple LiDAR lasers, advanced signal processing, and AI. With initial seed funding, Miraterra acquired Trace Genomics to expand into soil biology measurements, as AgTechNavigator reported.
“The hidden half of the biosphere is beneath our feet, and soil health emerges from the interaction of mineral, water, and biological systems. Most tools only measure one of those dimensions at a time, which limits both accuracy and usefulness. What Miraterra is doing differently is integrating all three — mineralogical, hydrological, and biological — into a single, scalable measurement platform. That level of high-confidence affordable measurement is what makes it possible to serve farmers at scale and to accelerate the real-world adoption of regenerative agriculture,” said Tom Chi, founding partner at At One Ventures, in the press release.
Bringing together the pieces together for a single offering
Miraterra is using the seed funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its technology services, which will include expanding from soil to plant and food measurements. The agtech start-up is already generating revenues with its Digitizer service and the biology business inherited from the Trace Genomics acquisition.
Miraterra plans to combine its various technology capabilities into a single offering and is working with farmers on what that single solution would look like, Kelly said.
“What we had before were a lot of parts that we were assembling. What we have today is the assembling of those parts, and then what we have with this capital is the ability to now start deploying it more broadly. We are just getting into revenue. So, this is going to really help us accelerate that revenue trajectory that we have, and more importantly, figure out how to bring together the system into a cohesive measurement and insight solution,” Kelly elaborated.
Celebrating Canadian agricultural innovation
Miraterra’s fundraise comes at a crucial point in Canada’s agriculture industry, as the country seeks homegrown solutions to bolster its agricultural production amid geopolitical tensions. Last year, FCC committed $2 billion in homegrown innovation through its investment arm, as AgTechNavigator reported.
“I was very impressed by Mark Carney’s speech that he gave at Davos about the middle powers. I actually think that when it comes to agriculture, Canada is a superpower. It just does not know it yet. And so, we want to lean into that and help Canada really stand out in the world with some of the innovation that we are bringing to the market,” Kelly said.
