The archive · Climate & Energy · Financial decision · 2017
Plenty raises $200M from SoftBank to take vertical indoor farms global
SoftBank Vision Fund led $200M into vertical-farming company Plenty in July 2017; Bezos and Schmidt joined, backing 530x-yield, pesticide-free indoor farms.
Plenty
What the business is
Plenty runs vertical indoor farms that grow produce — anything except tree fruit and root vegetables — on stacked shelves without pesticides or chemicals, claiming yields 530 times a typical field and selling at prices competitive with organic vegetables.
How it started
Plenty's bet was that crops do not need soil, sun or shipping: its vertical indoor farms stack growing space and claim yields 530 times a typical field, growing anything except tree fruit and root vegetables. CEO Matt Barnard called the pesticide-free output 'super organics.' By mid-2017 the company had two farms running — its South San Francisco headquarters and its operational base in Laramie, Wyoming — with venture firm DCM among earlier investors and first crops promised for supermarkets and online sales in the San Francisco area the following year.
What happened
On 2017-07-19 SoftBank Vision Fund led a $200 million investment into Plenty, with Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions joining and previous investor DCM also participating. Jeffrey Housenbold joined the board, and Plenty said the round would fund a global rollout of farms anywhere there is a population center. The same 24 hours saw the Vision Fund participate in a $114 million Series C for Brain Corp and a $159 million syndicate investment in Nauto. The field was crowded — AeroFarms, BrightFarms, Bowery Farming and Freight Farms were all developing indoor systems, and PodPonics, LocalGarden and FarmedHere had already closed because they were not viable businesses.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Plenty is a vertical indoor-farming company betting that agriculture can move out of fields: its stacked farms grow anything except tree fruit and root vegetables without pesticides or chemicals, claim yields 530 times a typical field, and aim to sell at prices competitive with organic vegetables. CEO Matt Barnard called the output 'super organics.' By mid-2017 the company ran two farms — its South San Francisco headquarters and its operational base in Laramie, Wyoming — and promised first crops for supermarkets and online sales in the San Francisco area the following year.
On 2017-07-19 SoftBank Vision Fund led a $200 million investment, with Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors and Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions joining and previous investor DCM participating; Jeffrey Housenbold joined the board. Plenty said the money would support a global rollout of vertical indoor farms anywhere there is a population center. SoftBank's fund was on a streak — within 24 hours it also participated in a $114 million Series C for Brain Corp and a $159 million syndicate investment in Nauto.
The confidence came despite a crowded field and a recent graveyard: AeroFarms, BrightFarms, Bowery Farming and Freight Farms were all building indoor systems, while PodPonics, LocalGarden and FarmedHere had already closed because they were not viable businesses. Plenty's wager was that 530x yields and city-adjacent farms would make the economics work where those earlier attempts failed.
What has to be true
- The efficiency claim was the pitch: yields 530 times a typical field, no pesticides or chemicals, and prices competitive with organic — a story big enough for SoftBank-scale capital.
- Location was the wedge: farms placed in population centers skip long field-to-city shipping, and first crops were promised for San Francisco-area supermarkets and online within a year.
- The investors were the signal: SoftBank Vision Fund led with Bezos Expeditions and Innovation Endeavors, and Jeffrey Housenbold joined the board, so the round read as an asset-class bet, not a seed.
- The graveyard showed the risk: AeroFarms, BrightFarms, Bowery and Freight Farms competed, and PodPonics, LocalGarden and FarmedHere had already closed as non-viable businesses.
What can be applied
Capital can fund farm networks, but not unit economics: Plenty's indoor-farming predecessors had already closed, and the bet was that 530x yields near cities would finally make the math work.
Aftermath
As of 2017-07-20 Plenty had a $200 million SoftBank Vision Fund-led round announced two days earlier, two operating farms (South San Francisco and Laramie, Wyoming), and plans to put its first crops on shelves in undisclosed supermarkets and online in the San Francisco area the following year, then build farms near population centers around the world. The round did not remove the competitive crowd — AeroFarms, BrightFarms, Bowery Farming and Freight Farms were all still developing indoor systems — nor the recent failures of PodPonics, LocalGarden and FarmedHere.
Sources
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