AgTech: $5B invested in 2018

AgTech is composed of startups disrupting agriculture. They come up with solutions to improve farming output and quality using drones, sensors and farm management software. AgTech is also about new farm products, next generation farms and urban farming. We range AgTech companies in 5 domains:

• Ag-BioTech (Ynsect)
• Drone&Robots (Precision Hawk)
• Agriculture marketplaces (Agriconomie)
• Urban and Novel farms (Agricool)
• Farm management software (Karnott)

See all definitions here

If we look at data, we can see that investments have risen slowly from $1.6b in 2014 to $2B in 2016 and then have known a steep increase in the last two years (almost $5B in 2018).

As you can see above, most of the investments made in 2018 have gone to US (46%) and China (36%) based startups. Europe’s 10% share is small and declining due to huge investments in mega startups in the US and China.

A first explanation (more could be said but it would go much further than the scope and size of this newsletter) can be found on the distribution of investments in the various domains. 47% of the money invested goes to marketplace startups, which can obviously grow faster when they can reach a huge market. This is the case of MeiCai, a Chinese unicorn (see our report on FoodTech unicorns for more) which raised $1.4B to delivery fresh produce (from small and medium-sized farms) to restaurants.

You wonder how to integrate FoodTech and AgTech into your innovation strategy, what are the startups who could threaten or enrich your business model? Contact us here.