Benson Hill Bio Increases Total Funding to $34.7 million

After presenting at the 2013 Ag Innovation, Benson Hill received two NSF STTR grants in 2014 and chose Larta’s Commercialization Assistance Program as a supplement for their grant. Since participating in our programs, Benson Hill has established multiple partnerships around the world. In 2014, Benson Hill and Centro de Tecnologia Canavieira (CTC), a market leader in Brazilian sugarcane, partnered to develop and commercialize traits to increase sugarcane crop yield. In 2015, Benson Hill expanded partnerships into Europe with Limagrain, an international cooperative group founded and directed by French farmers, and Biogemma, a biotechnology research company, to accelerate the development and commercialization of traits to increase corn and wheat yield. Since first presenting at Ag Showcase in 2013, Benson Hill has raised an additional estimated $33.7 million in funding. Their most recent major investment includes $25 million in Series B funding from Lewis & Clark Ventures in May 2017. 

Boosting crop yields on existing acreage is the foremost challenge in sustainable production agriculture. Founded in 2012 by two pioneering researchers in the photosynthesis field, Andrew Benson and Robin Hill, Benson Hill Biosystems is an agricultural solutions company dedicated to increasing crop yield primarily by increasing photosynthetic efficiency and carbon fixation. Benson Hill employs an integrated approach of computational and systems biology, bioinformatics, synthetic biology, and next-generation phenotyping, which afford it significant advantages in the field of intrinsic yield.

📅 2013

👤 Matthew Crisp

💼 Benson Hill Biosystems, Inc.

📍 St. Louis, Missouri