Five years after Pure Harvest pulled in its first hydroponically grown tomato crop, setting the Abu Dhabi-based company on a path to becoming one of the Gulf’s biggest agtech firms, co-founder Robert Kupstas is ready to grow something different: fish.
The entrepreneur’s latest venture, Ocean Harvest, which he founded in 2021, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding, set up shop one floor away from Pure Harvest’s offices, and hired an industry veteran in aquaculture. Last month, the company named a new CEO, venture capitalist Jawad Jamil, making a team of three that is ready for the next phase: a Series A fundraising round with a $180 million target of mixed equity and debt. The money will go to fund a 100,000-square-meter facility planned in the northern emirate of Ras Al Khaimah and later expansion into Saudi Arabia and markets in Asia.
“We’re looking for strategic investors, sovereign wealth funds, impact investors [and] infrastructure investors because we need those kinds of shareholders,” Jamil told The Circuit. “They are the ones who are not just looking at pure financial returns… getting my 3x, 5x [returns] and getting out. They have the understanding and the patience that is required to understand the intricacies of building such complicated infrastructure. And there’s more at play.”
Indeed, there is: The UAE imports 90% of its food, and agriculture contributes less than 0.1% to GDP, according to a 2023 government report. Mariam Hareb Almheiri, minister of climate change and environment, has called aquaculture “a core component of the UAE’s national food security strategy.” Growing salmon in the desert is not all that outlandish — the UAE has been making forays into the booming fish farming industry in recent years.
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