Anterra Capital announced the close of Fund III, after raising $100 million from investors to allocate toward food and agriculture startups.
Food and agriculture are a combined $10 trillion global industry “and one of the least digitized,” the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based VC firm said in a press release.
“AI is now changing that, with vertical AI investment tripling in a single year and adoption strongest in industries like food and agriculture that software never properly reached,” the company said.
Anterra has funded food, beverage and grocery tech startups including: Anchr, AgrigateOne, Berkeley Yeast, Cherrypick, Duvo, ItsFresh!, Kate Farms, La Fourche and ProducePay.
Agriculture-related businesses include: Agrimetis, Agryco, Enko Chem, Farmobile, Smartwyre and Vestaron.
“The firm has now successfully navigated two capital cycles in food and agriculture,” said Maarten Goossens, partner at Anterra Capital. “Each one rewarded the same discipline: backing companies that deliver real returns for their customers and to their investors. What’s different this time is that the real-world industries we operate in – large, complex and historically resistant to change – are now ready to be rewired, and the tools to do it have arrived.”
Building companies
Anterra not only provides seed funding for startup companies, it also builds companies from the ground up, Anterra said, noting that it recruits founding teams and creates businesses where it sees white space in food, beverage, agriculture and other areas.
The company noted its founding of Enko Chem, which uses AI to develop herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. The platform was notably used to develop alternatives to herbicides like glyphosate.
“Beyond company creation, Anterra’s limited partner and industry network gives early-stage portfolio companies immediate access to potential customers, strategic partners and acquirors – the kind of doors that take years to open independently,” the company said.
Fund III’s first round
Anterra’s first round of funding for Fund III reached the halfway mark for the firm’s ultimate goal of raising $200 million.
Some of the funds already have been deployed into two companies: Anchr and Animerra.
“Fund III has already backed Anchr, an AI-native platform modernizing food distribution alongside Andreessen Horowitz – Anterra’s sector knowledge and network gave the founders immediate access to the industry relationships that matter,” Anterra said.
The other company, Animerra, is a veterinary medicine company.
Disciplined investing
Anterra emphasized it is taking a disciplined approach in pursuing industry-transforming science and technology across the food and agriculture landscape.
“Food and agriculture has been through a noisy capital cycle. A lot of money chased capital-intensive stories that attempted to rebuild the food system from scratch,” the company said, highlighting its practical approach to transformation. “The food system is too large and too entrenched to be replaced, but it can be transformed from within, particularly by companies operating at deep leverage points that can scale on existing industry infrastructure, on economics that make sense from day one.”
Food and agriculture tech investing peaked in 2021, when global investment surged to $52 billion, Anterra said. That dropped back down to around $16 billion in recent years, following the failure of capital-intensive bets on industries like vertical farming and plant-based meat products, the investment group noted.
“Anterra took a different approach – backing science-backed companies built on real unit economics and designed to scale through existing industry channels,” Anterra said. “That retreat of capital from hype back to fundamentals is precisely what now opens the door for disciplined specialists.”