Pairwise says it has closed a $40 million Series C funding round, with the investments to be used to scale the technology company’s product pipeline, including seedless berries and pitless cherries, as well as advance its Fulcrum Platform.
Pairwise says its new seedless blackberry variety, announced in June, will deliver an improved eating experience for consumers and, in concert with compact architecture and thornless traits, bring added benefits to farm workers, growers and the environment as well.
“We started Pairwise in the early days of CRISPR to accelerate innovation across agriculture, enabling the cultivation of crops that are more adaptive to climate change, and more nutritious and convenient for consumers, all while bolstering grower economics,” Tom Adams, Pairwise co-founder and CEO, said in a news release. “This new investment will enable us to expand the impact of our proprietary Fulcrum Platform as we continue to lead this transformation with our proven ability to deliver novel solutions that address the most pressing challenges in agriculture today.”
The funding round was led by Deerfield Management; multiple returning investors, including Aliment Capital and Leaps by Bayer, were joined by new investor and global agtech company, Corteva Inc., through its Corteva Catalyst platform, according to the release.
“Using their novel tools, Pairwise has delivered game-changing edits in plant varieties across consumer and big-acre crops in just a few short years,” said Cam Wheeler, partner at Deerfield Management and Pairwise board chairman. “We believe that the precision, speed, and safety of gene editing is poised to transform agriculture, and our ongoing investment reflects our confidence in Pairwise as the clear leader in this space.”
Corteva Chief Technology and Digital Officer Sam Eathington said the company views gene editing as a critical solution to drive climate resilience across agriculture and global food systems.
“Pairwise is an obvious choice for our investment to help accelerate innovation through gene editing in fruit, vegetables, and specialty crops,” Eathington said. “And as leaders in gene editing ourselves, Corteva’s ultimate aim is to work with Pairwise to unlock the impact of this technology to help solve climate challenges and produce the food, fiber and fuel required to meet the needs of a growing global population.”
In parallel to Corteva’s equity investment in Pairwise, the two companies have entered into a five-year joint venture collaboration that will focus on accelerating the pace of gene-edited technologies and developing improved products that are more resilient to future climate conditions, the release said.
Corteva’s investment in Pairwise is being made through Corteva Catalyst, the company’s new investment and partnership platform launched to boost agricultural R&D and sustainable food production innovations.
Using knowledge of plant genetics, a broad suite of CRISPR tools and high-impact editing techniques like multiplexing, Pairwise said it has delivered multiple products with differentiated plant genetics across significant crops, including corn, soy, wheat, canola, leafy greens, blackberries, and more. As one of the only companies in this space to launch commercially viable products to date, Pairwise introduced the first CRISPR food to North America — a blend of superfood mustard greens that eat like lettuce, edited to dial down the wasabi-like pungency for people looking for healthier salad options than what are available in the marketplace today, the release said.
After laying the important commercial groundwork, the company entered into an exclusive product licensing agreement with Bayer to further develop and sell 10 varieties of Pairwise-edited greens at scale, as well as to develop and breed for new varieties with the technology. Additionally, after delivering 27 novel traits to Bayer’s pipeline under an initial five-year partnership, the two companies entered a second multiyear collaboration to focus on developing a gene-edited version of short-stature corn to offer farmers better protection for their crops given improved sustainability in high winds and challenging weather conditions, better access during the season, and higher yields, according to the release.
The Pairwise Fulcrum Platform includes company-developed gene-editing tools for cutting, base editing and templated editing — a toolbox that enables not only turning a characteristic on or off, like removing a plant’s thorns to enable easier fruit harvesting, but also “tuning” it like a dimmer switch to dial a trait up or down, such as creating a new type of corn with up to 20% more kernel rows, the release said. Using Pairwise’s novel editing tools, scientists can precisely tailor a wide range of genetic variation to develop new, distinctive plant varieties much faster and more effectively than through conventional breeding, the company said. In concert with its tools, Pairwise said its intellectual property enables a straightforward path to product commercialization.
“Our technology licensing agreements provide secured IP and increase shareholder value. And our proprietary suite of technologies — our Fulcrum Platform — is enabling us to unlock transformative improvements in global agriculture,” Adams said. “Our product-development partnerships with global agriculture leaders, Corteva and Bayer, underscored by investments from both Corteva Catalyst and Leaps by Bayer, are an incredible validation of our technology and an important signal that gene editing will play a major role in improving agriculture innovation moving forward.”
