Seattle, Washington, March 15, 2022— IUNU today announced it has raised an oversubscribed $24 million Series B round of financing led by Lewis & Clark Ventures. Existing investors S2G Ventures, Ceres Partners, and Astanor Ventures also participated. This funding will be used to accelerate the company’s growth plans, specifically around global sales expansion and new product introductions.
IUNU is developing the future of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) with a suite of solutions designed to bring data to the forefront of decision making. Founded in 2013, IUNU technology powers some of the world’s largest CEA operations. The company works with leading companies across the ecosystem, including some of the largest greenhouses and vertical farming companies such as Pure Green Farms, Hollandia Produce, CubicFarm Systems Corp. (TSX: CUB), the Red Hat Co-operative, Jamco Growers, and Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS)
Limited.
The company first launched in the leafy greens market, and now has more than 25% market share in North America and 74% of the top leafy greens greenhouse growers in North America run on IUNU’s LUNA Platform. Growers using LUNA products are increasing revenue and yield, decreasing labor costs, and seeing massive improvements to the quality of their crops by detecting and remediating issues earlier than ever. In addition to leafy greens, the company
works with growers in the cannabis, floriculture, and vine markets.
IUNU has seen an explosion of growth in recent months, expanding its team by 50% in the past six months in response to market demand for its solutions. With hundreds of robots already deployed capturing images in commercial operations and over 500 more scheduled for deployment this year, IUNU has deployed more robots than any other company in the industry.
In addition to its computer vision and artificial intelligence system, LUNA AI, every 5 minutes, a batch of crops is harvested in LUNA CMP, the company’s production and workforce management software. Together, the company has developed the largest production dataset in the industry – this in turn brings the most granular actionable alerts and information to customer hands.
“IUNU has an unmatchable stack of comprehensive product offerings that have been built and refined since 2013 making them the technology of choice for greenhouse and vertical farming operations,” said Suhas Narayanaswamy, Principal at Lewis and Clark AgriFood. “We are thrilled to be part of a company that is enabling the world’s largest CEA companies to be more efficient and ultimately enable consumers to access better quality fresh produce.”
“Greenhouse and vertical farming solve critical issues around food security, food safety and scarcity. IUNU’s technology brings incredible efficiency gains to indoor farming and is providing the foundation for data-driven indoor growing operations going forward,” said Cristina Rohr, Managing Director at S2G Ventures.
The CEA market is experiencing unprecedented growth right now. To address this growth, the company has recently completed two acquisitions of leading companies in the industry: Artemis and CropWalk, and completed a brand refresh. IUNU is the market leader in providing proven and trusted technologies to CEA growers and this latest round of funding will be used to continue expanding its market presence.
“This round of investment reflects the confidence institutional investors have in us. The conversation around autonomous growing has accelerated in the past year, and we’re proud to be leading the way on this front. We couldn’t be more excited to add Lewis and Clark as a partner and to have our existing investors continue growing with us,” said Adam Greenberg, CEO of IUNU.
“The CEA market has finally come to a point of proven expansion and we’re honored to be trusted by commercial operators who run their businesses on the LUNA Platform. This investment will be used to continue fueling our growth as we become the largest advanced technology company in the CEA industry,” said Allison Kopf, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Data Products at IUNU.
As part of the Series B, Suhas Narayanaswamy, Principal at Lewis and Clark AgriFood has joined the IUNU Board of Directors.
About IUNU
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Seattle, IUNU aims to close the loop in greenhouse autonomy and is focused on being the world’s leading controlled environment specialist. IUNU’s flagship LUNA Platform combines cultivation management software with LUNA AI, a computer vision and artificial intelligence system. This allows growers to keep track of the minutiae of plant growth and health in indoor ag settings. IUNU’s goal is to turn commercial greenhouses into precise, predictable, demand-based manufacturers that optimize yield, labor, and product quality. IUNU is the next step in autonomous growing. For more information, visit www.iunu.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.
About Lewis & Clark Ventures
Lewis & Clark AgriFood is a St. Louis-based group of experienced investment professionals who are passionate about investing in companies that are at the forefront of food and agriculture innovation. We look for companies that deliver benefits to the stakeholders in the food and agriculture sector, from the producer, through the supply chain, all the way to the consumer. We invest in companies that are at the growth stage of their evolution, poised to scale their technology to a national or global scale. As founders, operators, investors and scientists, our seasoned investment team brings a breadth of quality sector experience to every investment. For more information, visit www.lewisandclarkagrifood.com or connect with us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
About S2G Ventures
S2G Ventures is a multi-stage venture fund investing across the food, agriculture, oceans and seafood markets. The fund’s mission is to catalyze innovation to meet consumer demands for healthy and sustainable food systems. S2G has identified sectors across the food system that are ripe for change, and is building a multi-stage portfolio including seed, venture and growth stage investments. Core areas of interest for S2G are agriculture, oceans, ingredients, infrastructure and logistics, IT and hardware, food safety and technology, retail and restaurants, and consumer brands. For more information about S2G, visit www.s2gventures.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.
About Ceres Partners
Ceres Partners is a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on food and agriculture. Ceres Partners manages two investment vehicles with distinct strategies and investment objectives: Ceres Farms, LLC which invests in U.S. farmland, and Ceres Food & Agriculture Opportunity Fund, which invests growth equity in emerging operating businesses in food and agriculture. For more information on Ceres Partners, visit www.cerespartners.com.
About Astanor Ventures
Astanor Ventures is an impact investor that backs ambitious entrepreneurs across the world with disruptive, scalable solutions that will create systemic change across the agrifood value chain, from soil to gut. They partner with founders who are committed to restoring balance and sustainability to the land and oceans, prioritizing nature and culture, nurturing change and feeding growth. For more information about Astanor, visit Astanor.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.
