Beeflow, a leader in crop pollination technologies, announced the close of its $8.3 million Series A financing round, led by Ospraie Ag Science and joined by Future Ventures’ Steve Jurvetson (Board member of Tesla, SpaceX), Jeff Wilke (former Amazon CEO, Worldwide Consumer), Vectr Ventures, SOSV’s IndieBio and Grid Exponential.
Beeflow’s pollination technologies help farmers improve yields of crops such as blueberries and almonds by up to 90%, and reduce the mortality rate of bees, which are essential to biodiversity and sustainable agriculture, by up to 70%.
Founded by Argentinian Matias Viel in 2016, the Los Angeles-based company is working with firms such as Driscoll’s, the largest US berry producer, to maximize berry size and quantity per plant.
“We are impressed with Beeflow’s advances in bee health and pollination efficiency, which are critically important to a durable and well-functioning set of interconnected ecosystems. OAS is excited to lead the Series A round, supporting Beeflow’s continued innovation on the farm and those concomitant positive externalities to the environment,” said Yogesh Mago, Senior Partner at Ospraie Ag Science.
“We are very excited to work with investors who believe that bees will play a role in leading the transition to a more regenerative and sustainable agriculture system,” said Viel, the CEO of Beeflow. “Pollination was a largely forgotten issue by the agriculture industry, but now “bee-friendly” practices are becoming standard for the food supply chain. It’s a perfect time for us to scale and grow our team.”
The Beeflow platform is based on extensive scientific research into how bee nutrition and behavior influence pollinators’ performance and health. Dr. Walter Farina, an Argentinean researcher with more than 20 years of experience studying bee brains and communication, leads the scientific effort for Beeflow’s ToBEE – a technology that trains bees to pollinate targeted flowers.
Beeflow’s research has also enabled development of plant-based dietary supplements that produce powerful outcomes for farmers as well as the bee ecosystem. For example, one of these technologies helps bees improve their pollination in cooler temperatures by up to 7x.
“Bees are responsible for pollinating 70% of global crop production and play a significant role in our food supply chain,” says Viel, “but the agriculture industry historically has been hard on insects, and many of the planet’s 20,000 bee species are near extinction. We need to restore insect biodiversity to make agriculture more sustainable. At Beeflow, we use nature as a technology to produce more food with less environmental impact.”
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