UK-founded Resurrect Bio has closed its Series A at a final $10.3 million, led by Corteva through the Corteva Catalyst platform and joined by several specialist agtech investors. $10.3M Series A expands on an earlier tranche and brings the startup’s total capital to $12.4 million, money the company says it will use to grow its team and advance disease-resistance traits in major crops.
The company’s platform focuses on restoring plant immune receptors (NLR proteins) that pathogens suppress by secreting effector proteins that bind those receptors. Resurrect Bio’s FloraFold AI predicts likely protein–protein interactions between crop NLRs and pathogen effectors, then prioritizes candidates for rapid in-planta and in-silico screening. Head of operations Robert Lo Bue says some fixes are as small as a single amino-acid change at a binding site, enough to prevent an effector from disabling a plant’s immune response.
Resurrect Bio positions its approach as broadly applicable across crops and many pathogen types, from fungal diseases to oomycetes and nematodes, and as a pathway to reduce reliance on chemical inputs. The firm provides partners—typically seed companies and breeders—with precise targets for edits rather than performing the edits itself, advising where and how to alter plant proteins so the innate immune system can act again.
How the technology works
The company’s tech stack rests on three capabilities: its FloraFold protein–protein AI prediction tool trained on plant–pathogen interactions; high-throughput screening that physically tests effector–NLR interactions at scale; and what it calls its “resurrection” workflow, which identifies minimal sequence changes to block binding. Lo Bue describes the core task as finding which one of thousands of possible molecular interactions actually matters and then designing the change that breaks it.
Resurrect Bio has demonstrated the approach on potato cyst nematode and has expanded into multiple crops. The firm recently announced a joint development agreement with Corteva to apply its discovery platform to corn disease resistance, a direct route into U.S. row-crop breeding pipelines. Joint development on corn, the company says, lets seed partners combine Resurrect Bio’s targets with their own germplasm and editing capabilities to develop resistant varieties.
Funding and partnerships
Corteva led the round via Corteva Catalyst, with participation from Calculus Capital, Pymwymic, Future Planet Capital (UKI2S), SynBioVen, and AgFunder, lifting Resurrect Bio’s cumulative funding to $12.4 million. CEO Cian Duggan said the raise reflects growing conviction in a scalable, AI-driven platform for restoring resistance, and that the company is now actively seeking additional joint development agreements with seed companies and breeders.
Duggan noted that agtech commercialization often mixes institutional VC with corporate venture capital, philanthropy or large public grants, and he sees CVC involvement as increasingly accepted in the sector. The company says the newly raised funds will be deployed to expand its team, accelerate screening and validation work, and support joint projects with seed partners to translate molecular targets into edited, disease-resistant varieties.
Photo - agfundernews.com
