Computomics has secured €6.3 million in a Series B financing round led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund, which contributed €5 million. Existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), MBG Baden-Württemberg and Amathaon Capital also participated, alongside the company’s founders and scientific advisers.
The Tübingen-based company said the funding will be used to scale commercial deployment of its breeding prediction platform, which uses machine learning to help breeders identify crop varieties better suited to future growing conditions.
The investment comes at a time when climate pressures on European agriculture are becoming increasingly visible. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has downgraded 2026 yield forecasts for all spring and summer crops, with maize and sunflower among the hardest hit, while France is expected to record one of its weakest maize harvests in decades.
Breeding for tomorrow’s climate
Computomics argues that one of the biggest challenges facing plant breeding is that varieties entering the market today were selected for environmental conditions that no longer exist.
Its platform combines genomic, environmental and field-trial data to predict how a particular genotype will perform under specific growing conditions. Breeders can use the technology to assess which varieties are likely to perform under heat and drought stress, identify material with stable performance across different environments and determine where new varieties should be deployed.
The company’s flagship ×SeedScore® platform applies these predictions at commercial breeding scale across field crops, forage crops, vegetables and specialty crops.
“Breeders have never lacked ambition about climate resilience. What they have lacked is a way to see it before the field tells them, which takes years they no longer have,” said Dr Sebastian J. Schultheiss, co-founder and CEO of Computomics.
“This financing is about getting that capability into far more breeding programmes, faster.”
Drought highlights urgency
The financing arrives as the 2026 European drought highlights the growing mismatch between the pace of climate change and traditional breeding cycles.
According to Germany’s Deutscher Raiffeisenverband, which represents agricultural cooperatives and agribusinesses across Germany, around three million tonnes of grain and rapeseed were lost between mid-June and mid-August, with the country’s grain harvest forecast to fall to around 40.6 million tonnes, down from 45 million tonnes in 2025.
Computomics is headquartered in Tübingen, a region that has been significantly affected by drought conditions.
The company is careful not to overstate the impact of the new investment, noting that breeding cycles typically last between five and fifteen years, meaning no technology investment made today will influence the outcome of the current harvest.
Instead, the company sees the extreme conditions experienced this summer as a blueprint for the varieties farmers will need in the early 2030s.
“The critical question is whether breeding programmes can move fast enough to keep pace with a climate signal that is currently moving faster than they are,” the company said.
Shortening breeding cycles
Computomics points to its work with AB InBev as evidence of the potential impact of predictive breeding technologies.
The company says it helped the brewer reduce its barley breeding cycle from 12 years to five years, a project referenced in AB InBev’s 2021 ESG report. The achievement is particularly significant given the susceptibility of malting barley to heat stress during grain filling.
Founded in 2012 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Society and the University of Tübingen, Computomics has built its business over more than a decade before reaching Series B stage. Its customer base includes three of the world’s largest agricultural companies, food and beverage firms such as AB InBev, and public-sector organisations including the USDA and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
Investors back AI-driven crop resilience
For lead investor Convent Capital, the attraction lies in the link between sustainability and commercial returns.
“We back companies whose environmental impact grows with their commercial success,” said Stephen McLoughlin, partner at Convent Capital Agri Food Fund.
“Better breeding predictions mean fewer wasted seasons and varieties that hold up in the field, so the impact case and the business case point the same way.”
Meanwhile, HTGF highlighted the role of AI-enabled breeding in adapting agriculture to climate change.
“AI-based breeding of stress-resistant crops is part of the German federal government’s High-Tech Agenda for good reason: it is one of the levers that matter most as the climate shifts,” said Dr Frank Hensel, principal at HTGF.
“HTGF has supported Computomics since the seed phase and congratulates the team on this growth financing.”
