Crop protection Start Up AgriMetis raises $23.5 million in funding

AgriMetis LLC, a private company innovating Agricultural crop protection products, announced today the completion of a $20 million Series B raise that was oversubscribed resulting in a $23.5 million series B financing. The financing included the participation of new investors Anterra Capital (lead), RA Capital Management, and Alexandria Venture Investments. Also, all of the company's Series A investors participated including co-founders Syngenta Ventures and Acidophil LLC.

"We are excited to have the support of such a valued group of existing and new investors as part of the AgriMetis team," said Steve Tuttle, President and CEO of AgriMetis. "The proceeds from this financing will allow us to continue to expand the discovery, development and delivery of new innovative agriculture crop protection products."

"Having mapped out the competitive dynamics of key segments of the Ag biotech space, we believe that AgriMetis is uniquely positioned to address important unmet needs in the development of herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides" said Peter Kolchinsky, Managing Director of RA Capital Management. "The parallels between AgriMetis' strategy and that of healthcare biotechnology companies are striking. We think innovation related to agriculture is best appreciated in the context of global human health and certainly should interest sophisticated healthcare investors who see the bigger picture."

"The natural product chemical class offers enormous potential in crop protection. However, this potential has been largely limited by the complex combination of chemistry and biology required to produce marketable products." remarked Philip Austin, Founding Partner at Anterra Capital.

"AgriMetis' world class virtualized R&D organization leverages cutting edge advances in organic chemistry and synthetic biology to solve the specific issues that have limited natural products in their journey to market. AgriMetis has demonstrated the incredible efficiency of its approach in generating novel products that have the potential to displace small molecules. We are looking forward to bringing these to market over the coming years and to continue to build on the company's impressive pipeline."

For more information, please visit www.agrimetis.com