The global food system faces escalating environmental and geopolitical pressures, necessitating advanced solutions such as drought-resistant crops and accelerated research and development. Agrifood startups are increasingly adopting “deeptech,” which involves companies with core scientific or engineering defensibility in areas like biology, robotics, or advanced computation. This shift is driven by urgent industry modernization needs. Investment in deeptech within agrifood has grown significantly, with its share of funding nearly doubling from 34% in 2021 to 59% in 2025, despite an overall decline in sector funding. Deeptech seed rounds are larger, reflecting investor confidence in scientific potential. Breakthroughs in AI and synthetic biology are compressing research timelines. Deeptech is most impactful in areas requiring extensive data processing or significant labor, particularly in R&D, though investors advise caution regarding superficial applications and past failures in certain deeptech sectors.
Source: Tracking deeptech’s journey in agrifood