Agtech has been on a little bit of a roll of late when it comes to startups locking up big rounds

Los Angeles-based Agrovision is the latest. The agtech startup locked up a $100 million round at a valuation of $1 billion, per a Bloomberg report. The new round was led by Aliment Capital.

Agrovision is a grower, packer, shipper and marketer of superfruits such as cherries and berries, selling its fruit under its branded Fruitist and Big Skye labels. The company also uses some tech in its growing — using proprietary genetics and data analytics.

Big deals

Agtech has had its ups and downs, but the last week or so has been good to the sector.

Last week, Monarch Tractor — the creator of a fully electric, driver-optional smart tractor — raised a $133 million Series C co-led by Astanor Ventures and HH-CTBC Partnership. The company also offers the WingspanAI platform, which gives farmers access to on-farm data, vehicle position tracking, crop image collection and more to help close the industry’s profit gap.

Perhaps these two rounds can wake up the somewhat sleepy agtech sector. Thus far this year, agriculture and farming startups have raised only $2.3 billion in a meager 365 deals, according to Crunchbase data.

That pace is slower than last year, when similar startups raised $4.6 billion in 944 deals.

Both those numbers are well below the industry’s highs reached in 2021 and 2022, when startups raised $10 billion and $9.4 billion, respectively.

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

• Funding To Agriculture And Farming Startups

Related reading:

• Vertical Farming Venture Capital Has Dried Up, But Startups Are Still Planting Seeds

Illustration: Dom Guzman