On January 31, we announced that Enko had completed our Series C funding round following our initial close of $70 million last summer. Eight Roads Ventures, Nufarm, Endeavor8, and Akroyd LLC led this round, which brings our total capital raised to $150 million.

We’ll use the funding to advance our ENKOMPASS™ technology platform and accelerate our work supporting food security. The need has never been more urgent, with our global food system facing unprecedented threats – from worsening chemical resistance to severe droughts and floods that signal the havoc climate change has yet to wreak. 

We’re proud to work with investors who recognize the imperative of getting new crop health solutions into farmers’ hands quickly in response to these mounting threats. Eight Roads investors Betty Cai, Arjun Singh and Stephanie Yeha recently shared their perspective on why now is the moment to invest in agtech solutions, starting with Enko:

^{Innovation in agriculture is the need of the hour… a relatively commoditized and conservative industry when compared to other technology areas, [it] is a sector that has been unfortunately neglected and underinvested. This trend is particularly prominent when comparing the development of novel human health drugs to crop health products, where human pharmaceuticals has progressed significantly over the last few decades, whereas agricultural innovation has stalled – for example, of the top 10 herbicides in the market today, 7 were launched before 2000.}

^{Enko has developed a unique crop protection molecule discovery platform which leverages DNA-encoded libraries and machine learning. The platform is capable of screening billions of molecules against biological targets of interest in a few weeks to generate a large number of hits in a cost and time effective manner.}

Enko’s technology platform and target-based approach significantly improve our rate of new chemistry discovery and the likelihood that we can successfully commercialize those discoveries faster than traditional discovery methods, which can take up to 12 years. 

As we accelerate our work with these technologies, we’re inspired by how tech has addressed food system challenges before. History is filled with examples of technology making agriculture more efficient and productive. In the 20th century alone, the Haber-Bosch process, the development of higher-yield rice in China and the Green Revolution in India reduced food insecurity and malnutrition for billions of people. 

We’re eager to make our own contributions to today’s farmers and future ones with cutting-edge technology. Thanks to our investor partners that are also committed to creating a more resilient global food system, we’ll work toward realizing this vision and making an impact for growers around the world. In the Eight Roads team’s words:

^{With agriculture being a key focus in every part of the world, we are excited by the potential to expand Enko’s reach, especially to explore the impact on global food ecosystems, particularly as it may apply to emerging markets like China & India.}