Rainbow Crops, the agtech start-up featured by AgNavigator earlier this year, has raised an oversubscribed €9.7 million seed round to expand its AI-powered genome editing platform and push closer to commercial deployment.
The round was led by Italian VC LIFTT, alongside LIFTT EuroInvest, with participation from existing backers including AIF, PINC and VIB, and new strategic investors such as Corteva, via its Corteva Catalyst™ platform, and Maia Ventures.
The raise marks a significant step forward for the company, which in March outlined its ambition to reinvent crop breeding through the integration of artificial intelligence and gene editing.
Tackling the limits of traditional breeding
As AgNavigator previously reported, Rainbow Crops is targeting one of the industry’s biggest bottlenecks: the difficulty of engineering complex, multi-gene traits such as yield and climate resilience.
While conventional breeding has improved crop performance over decades, it remains slow, costly and often unpredictable. These challenges are intensifying amid climate volatility, shifting regulations and rising input costs.
Rainbow Crops’ answer is its proprietary Trait Foundry™ platform, which combines artificial intelligence, multiplex genome editing, precision breeding and automated phenotyping.
Together, these tools allow the company to design and test combinations of genetic traits at scale, rather than relying on incremental and time-consuming breeding cycles.
Proof of concept has already been demonstrated in corn, a key milestone that underpins investor confidence.
AI meets multiplex genome editing
At the core of the company’s approach is the use of multiplex genome editing, enabling multiple genes to be edited simultaneously. This is something that has historically been difficult to achieve with precision.
By combining this capability with AI-driven trait discovery, Rainbow Crops is aiming to systematically explore and optimise complex genetic architectures, rather than relying on trial-and-error.
“Our goal is to accelerate complex trait engineering and make it accessible to partners globally,” said CEO and co-founder Giacomo Bastianelli.
With the new funding, the company plans to move from early validation to broader deployment across multiple crops, while also scaling its scientific and technical teams.
Strong validation from industry and investors
The participation of Corteva is particularly notable, signalling interest from one of the world’s largest seed and crop protection companies in next-generation breeding technologies.
Investors pointed to the company’s potential to deliver climate-resilient, high-performing crop varieties faster and more predictably, supported by early field validation in major crops, a growing proprietary data advantage, backing from the Gates Foundation and access to VIB’s research infrastructure.
“This round signals strong external validation and positions Rainbow Crops as an emerging category leader in AI-driven, multiplex genome engineering,” said Bastianelli.
Edoardo Bianchi of LIFTT described the company as a “category-defining platform” addressing critical challenges in crop breeding.
Rainbow Crops’ progress reflects a wider transformation in agrifood innovation, where AI is accelerating breeding cycles, gene editing is expanding the design space of crops and investors are backing scalable, platform-based technologies.
From platform to field impact
The key challenge now is execution: translating technological capability into real-world performance on farms.
Rainbow Crops is betting that its integrated approach combining design, validation and field testing can shorten that pathway.
“We are now focused on innovative partnerships and on delivering real-world impact in the field,” said Bastianelli.
If successful, the company could help redefine how crops are developed, moving from slow, iterative breeding toward a more predictive, data-driven model of crop design.
