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Rainbow Crops Raises 9.7 Million Seed Funding to Expand AI-Enabled Gene-Editing Platform
When Belgium‑based ag‑tech startup Rainbow Crops announced a €9.7 million seed round in 2026, the headline immediately caught the eye of investors and scientists alike.
The financing was led by LIFTT EuroInvest, a venture vehicle spun out of the European Investment Bank and Italian VC firm LIFTT. The round also attracted Agri Investment Fund (AIF), the venture arm of food group Paulig (PINC), the VIB research institute that spun the company out of its own labs in 2025, Maia Ventures, and Corteva Catalyst.
The new capital will be channeled into the company’s Trait Foundry™ platform, a closed‑loop system that marries artificial intelligence with multiplex CRISPR‑based genome editing. The goal is to accelerate the creation of crop varieties that boast higher yields, drought tolerance, heat resilience, and other complex traits that are notoriously difficult to achieve through conventional breeding.
CEO Giacomo Bastianelli told AgFunderNews that the platform constructs a “massive graph” linking genes to one another and to phenotypic traits. The graph is built from public datasets, scientific literature, and data generated by Rainbow Crops’ own experiments. An AI model then predicts which sets of edits will most likely produce the desired trait, and the edits are introduced simultaneously in a single transformation event.
The scale of the edits is notable: the company can target 50–100 changes at once, a number that exceeds most commercial gene‑editing programs. Moreover, the platform goes beyond simple knock‑outs. By editing regulatory elements, Rainbow Crops can fine‑tune gene expression rather than simply disabling a gene, giving breeders greater control and reducing unintended side effects.
Validation of the approach has already taken place in greenhouse trials and a small pilot field trial in corn that focused on increased biomass and yield. Results from the field trial are still being analyzed. The company is also working on a Gates Foundation‑backed project that targets heat and drought tolerance in sorghum and rice. The foundation awarded Rainbow Crops a $7 million grant in 2025 to support this work.
Rainbow Crops’ business model centers on partnering with seed and breeding companies that possess elite germplasm but lack advanced gene‑editing capabilities. The startup licenses the output of its platform, earning royalties on commercialized varieties, and also charges upfront research and development fees and milestone payments. The company said it expects to announce a corn collaboration with a seed partner soon and is in discussions for additional partnerships in other crops.
Infrastructure at the VIB campus in Ghent supports the company’s workflow. The campus provides crop transformation facilities that deliver gene‑editing tools into plant cells and regenerate whole plants, and it houses an automated phenotyping facility that can screen up to 16,000 plants simultaneously using conveyor belts and imaging systems.
Regulatory considerations are part of the company’s strategy. Under the European Union’s proposed framework for plants produced through new genomic techniques (NGT), plants with no more than 20 specified genetic modifications may qualify as NGT‑1, a category treated as equivalent to conventional plants. Plants with more complex modifications fall into NGT‑2 and remain subject to existing GMO rules. Bastianelli noted that a plant with 19 edits that is crossed with a plant with four edits would still be within the NGT‑1 limit.
The company is also exploring the possibility of testing edited populations directly in the field rather than first in greenhouses, although this would add regulatory complexity.
In short, Rainbow Crops has secured a seed round that will fund the expansion of its AI‑driven gene‑editing platform. Its multiplex editing and closed‑loop data integration position it to tackle polygenic traits that are challenging for traditional breeding, while upcoming collaborations, ongoing field trials, and the evolving NGT regulatory framework will shape its path to commercial deployment.
The financing was led by LIFTT EuroInvest, a venture vehicle spun out of the European Investment Bank and Italian VC firm LIFTT. The round also attracted Agri Investment Fund (AIF), the venture arm of food group Paulig (PINC), the VIB research institute that spun the company out of its own labs in 2025, Maia Ventures, and Corteva Catalyst.
The new capital will be channeled into the company’s Trait Foundry™ platform, a closed‑loop system that marries artificial intelligence with multiplex CRISPR‑based genome editing. The goal is to accelerate the creation of crop varieties that boast higher yields, drought tolerance, heat resilience, and other complex traits that are notoriously difficult to achieve through conventional breeding.
CEO Giacomo Bastianelli told AgFunderNews that the platform constructs a “massive graph” linking genes to one another and to phenotypic traits. The graph is built from public datasets, scientific literature, and data generated by Rainbow Crops’ own experiments. An AI model then predicts which sets of edits will most likely produce the desired trait, and the edits are introduced simultaneously in a single transformation event.
The scale of the edits is notable: the company can target 50–100 changes at once, a number that exceeds most commercial gene‑editing programs. Moreover, the platform goes beyond simple knock‑outs. By editing regulatory elements, Rainbow Crops can fine‑tune gene expression rather than simply disabling a gene, giving breeders greater control and reducing unintended side effects.
Validation of the approach has already taken place in greenhouse trials and a small pilot field trial in corn that focused on increased biomass and yield. Results from the field trial are still being analyzed. The company is also working on a Gates Foundation‑backed project that targets heat and drought tolerance in sorghum and rice. The foundation awarded Rainbow Crops a $7 million grant in 2025 to support this work.
Rainbow Crops’ business model centers on partnering with seed and breeding companies that possess elite germplasm but lack advanced gene‑editing capabilities. The startup licenses the output of its platform, earning royalties on commercialized varieties, and also charges upfront research and development fees and milestone payments. The company said it expects to announce a corn collaboration with a seed partner soon and is in discussions for additional partnerships in other crops.
Infrastructure at the VIB campus in Ghent supports the company’s workflow. The campus provides crop transformation facilities that deliver gene‑editing tools into plant cells and regenerate whole plants, and it houses an automated phenotyping facility that can screen up to 16,000 plants simultaneously using conveyor belts and imaging systems.
Regulatory considerations are part of the company’s strategy. Under the European Union’s proposed framework for plants produced through new genomic techniques (NGT), plants with no more than 20 specified genetic modifications may qualify as NGT‑1, a category treated as equivalent to conventional plants. Plants with more complex modifications fall into NGT‑2 and remain subject to existing GMO rules. Bastianelli noted that a plant with 19 edits that is crossed with a plant with four edits would still be within the NGT‑1 limit.
The company is also exploring the possibility of testing edited populations directly in the field rather than first in greenhouses, although this would add regulatory complexity.
In short, Rainbow Crops has secured a seed round that will fund the expansion of its AI‑driven gene‑editing platform. Its multiplex editing and closed‑loop data integration position it to tackle polygenic traits that are challenging for traditional breeding, while upcoming collaborations, ongoing field trials, and the evolving NGT regulatory framework will shape its path to commercial deployment.
