Rainbow Crops raises €9.7M seed to engineer crops with AI gene editing

Ghent-based Rainbow Crops has raised an oversubscribed €9.7 million seed led by Italian investor LIFTT, with Corteva (via Corteva Catalyst), Maia Ventures and existing backers VIB, AIF and PINC participating. The round is separate from a prior €6 million Gates Foundation grant the company has also secured.

Editing many genes at once

A spin-out from the VIB–UGent Centre for Plant Systems Biology, Rainbow Crops is built around a platform it calls the Trait Foundry — a stack that combines AI, multiplex genome editing, precision breeding and automated phenotyping. The point is to go after complex traits: not the single-gene tweaks that are now routine, but the multi-gene combinations that govern yield and resilience to drought, heat and disease.

By pairing multiplex editing with breeding, the company generates plant populations with rationally designed genetic diversity, then uses AI to identify and evaluate the combinations that actually work. It has demonstrated proof of concept in corn and works with seed companies, breeders and research partners.

Why a major showed up

The most telling name on the cap table is Corteva, one of the world's largest agricultural-input companies, investing through its Corteva Catalyst arm. Strategic capital from an incumbent at seed stage is a signal that the trait-engineering bottleneck Rainbow Crops is attacking is one the industry itself wants solved — and would rather buy into early than build.

Founded in 2025 and led by CEO Giacomo Bastianelli, the company will use the round to advance the platform, extend it across more crops, and grow its scientific and technical team. The wager is that designing complex traits — and licensing that capability to partners globally — becomes infrastructure for the next generation of seed development.