Swedish agtech company raises €5 million to bring climate-resilient wheat to market
Gothenburg-based agtech company OlsAro has raised €5 million in a seed round led by Industrifonden, with Nordic Foodtech VC as co-lead. Existing investors Future Food Fund, PINC, AgFunder and GU Ventures also took part. The round follows a €2.5 million pre-seed financing in April 2024 and brings total funding to roughly €7.5 million.
OlsAro develops climate-resilient cereal genetics through its proprietary SeedAX platform, which combines genetics, data and AI-driven trait discovery to identify and validate useful traits. Those traits can then be built into elite crop varieties for commercial seed programmes. The company's initial focus is wheat, especially salt tolerance. According to OlsAro, its salt-resilient wheat achieved up to 41% higher yields than a moderately salt-tolerant variety under saline conditions in Bangladesh, and the variety is now in field trials in several international markets.
The new money will fund international field trials and commercial work with seed-company partners as OlsAro prepares to bring its first product, the salt-tolerant wheat, to market. It will also pay for further development of SeedAX and AI-driven trait discovery, and for expanding the company's intellectual property portfolio. Beyond salinity and heat tolerance, OlsAro plans new programmes on drought tolerance and nitrogen-use efficiency, and intends to extend its work to other cereals, including rice.
The company's strategy is to make its technology available to seed companies, which can incorporate the traits into commercial varieties and deliver them to farmers in different markets. CEO Elén Faxö said the round is about turning the company's capability into a platform seed companies can use repeatedly. Industrifonden's Sara Frykstrand Ångström pointed to the science, field-trial results and existing seed-company partnerships as what convinced the investors.
The problem is substantial: soil salinity affects around a tenth of the world's cropland, and rising temperatures and drought are adding pressure to cereal production. Crops that tolerate these conditions could help farmers maintain yields.