Heritable Agriculture Launches From X to Enhance Crops and Sustainably Feed the World
Heritable Agriculture, a pioneering company that spun out of Alphabet’s moonshot factory, X, has officially emerged from stealth mode today, revealing its ambitious mission to revolutionize the world’s food systems. With a core focus on plant breeding and biotechnology, the company aims to increase the resilience of global agricultural systems, addressing the urgent need to sustainably feed a growing global population.
Heritable Agriculture has attracted significant investment from FTW Ventures, Mythos Ventures, and both the Sunrise and Pioneer funds of SVG Ventures, all of which are supporting the development of the company’s advanced AI platform. This innovative platform is designed to make plants programmable, enabling the creation of higher-yielding, more nutritious, climate-resilient crops that are easier and cheaper to breed.
As the global population continues to grow, the demand for food production is intensifying, making it essential to explore innovative ways to boost crop yields and enhance agricultural sustainability. However, the traditional methods of crop improvement are slow, expensive, and often inadequate in meeting the challenges of modern food production.
Dr. Brad Zamft, CEO and co-founder of Agriculture, emphasized the importance of addressing these challenges: “To keep pace with the world’s growing population, we need smart, sustainable ways to increase food production. Yet the current pace and cost of crop improvement puts our global food systems at risk and limits the growth of the agriculture industry.” Zamft added that Heritable’s AI-powered biotechnology platform could address critical issues in agriculture, including lowering crop improvement costs, enhancing yields, boosting disease resistance, and accelerating the development of new, resilient plant varieties.
Heritable Agriculture combines a range of cutting-edge technologies, including advanced artificial intelligence, multi-omics, predictive breeding methods, and high-throughput gene editing. These innovations provide powerful new tools for breeding plants that are optimized for specific environments or designed with enhanced traits such as improved nutrition, color, flavor, or resistance to pests and diseases. The Heritable platform offers agriculture partners three key services: identifying important genes, designing precise gene edits, and predicting plant performance under different environmental conditions and management practices.
Brian Frank, managing partner at FTW Ventures, expressed his excitement about Heritable’s potential to reshape the agriculture industry: “ combines an exceptional team, with industry-leading experience, a huge vision, and breakthrough technology. This aligned perfectly with our fund’s vision to solve the biggest challenges facing our worldwide food system.” Frank added that FTW Ventures was thrilled to partner with Heritable after discovering the company through their expert network.
The founding team of Heritable Agriculture brings a wealth of expertise in both artificial intelligence and plant biology. The team includes Dr. Davide Sosso and Professor Tim Beissinger, who spent years working together on the company’s initial development at X, the moonshot factory. Their work focused on developing Heritable’s AI platform and publishing groundbreaking experiments that demonstrated how multi-omics data could be used to improve plant traits and predict their performance even in changing environments. The team has recently added Dan Voytas, a National Academy of Sciences member and a recognized leader in plant gene editing, to further strengthen Heritable’s expertise in genetic technology.
Heritable’s impact goes beyond improving food crops. The company is also applying its innovative AI technology to the forestry sector, in collaboration with ArborGen, a leading global provider of tree seedlings. By leveraging Heritable’s AI platform, the partnership aims to accelerate the development of superior loblolly pine trees, which could drastically reduce the time needed for tree improvement. Early research suggests that Heritable’s platform has the potential to cut tree breeding timelines in half, offering a revolutionary new approach to forestry.
John Hartnett, Founder and CEO of SVG Ventures | THRIVE, highlighted the significance of Heritable’s mission: “Heritable Agriculture represents exactly the type of visionary innovation that agriculture needs right now. By combining cutting-edge AI with deep expertise in plant biology, they are fundamentally reimagining how we improve crops to meet the growing demands of a changing planet.” Hartnett also emphasized that Heritable’s technology could drive a major shift in agricultural productivity, resilience, and sustainability across the entire agri-food system, helping to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing global agriculture.
Dr. Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X, underscored the importance of Heritable’s work in the context of global food systems. “Agriculture deserves moonshots,” Teller said. “Heritable’s mission to make our food systems more resilient is an example of the kind of global challenges we tackle at X. By developing tools to deepen our understanding of the plant world, the Heritable team has the potential to contribute to a more productive and sustainable agriculture industry.”
Jonathan Eng of Mythos Ventures, who also invested in Heritable, was similarly impressed with the company’s potential: “We were impressed by the ambition and expertise of Heritable’s founding team, which is needed to truly revolutionize agriculture with AI. Their ability to generate proprietary data, derive insights across diverse crop species, and build deep industry partnerships will allow them to address one of the most pressing challenges in food production today. The world needs this kind of company more than ever.
The global agricultural industry is currently grappling with significant challenges, including climate change, resource depletion, population growth, and an increased demand for food. In response, Heritable Agriculture is leveraging state-of-the-art AI and plant biology technologies to accelerate the development of crops that can thrive in a changing world. The company’s platform uses AI-driven insights to design plants with enhanced traits, such as improved nutritional content, greater resilience to environmental stressors, and higher yields. These innovations have the potential to radically transform food production, helping to ensure food security for future generations.
