Provivi raises a sizzling $85 million for the Loneliest Technology in the World

In California, Provivi has completed a monster $85 million Series C financing. If you know the company, you wouldn’t be all that surprised, the buzz is strong, but if you’re not acquainted, welcome to this late October online meeting of the “WHO THE **** ARE THESE GUYS (and how the *** did they raise this level of money)?” Club.

The round was co-led by Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Fund and a global investment fund. The round also included new investor Tybourne Capital Management. Existing investors Kairos Ventures, Spruce Capital, Lanx Capital, and BASF Venture Capital also participated in the round. Bosun Hau, Managing Director and Co-Head of Private Equity at Tybourne Capital Management, will also serve as a board observer.

Proceeds from the Series C financing will support the launch of Provivi’s pheromone products as part of the Company’s mission to bring this innovative solution to farmers around the world. 

The Provivi Backstory: A lonelyhearts machine for the biggest population grouping in the animal kingdom.

Provivi works by stripping insects of their instinctive ability to find a mate, an ability steeped in pheromones, yet on Planet Provivi, technology induceth confusion, insects never find true love, and that is why that Provivi is the loneliest technology in the world.

It was Billy Joe Armstrong who first wrote about Provivi, in Green Day’s anthemic Boulevard of Broken Dreams, I think.

I walk a lonely road, The only one that I have ever known
Don’t know where it goes, But it’s only me, and I walk alone

We profiled the company in depth in I’ll Never Find Another You: Provivi’s protecting crops by confusing pests in their search for romance, here.

Who’s Provivi, again?

Provivi puts it more sedately, that they are:

“Developing a family of safer, effective, and economical solutions for crop protection based on pheromones as a foundation for integrated pest management. Pheromones are natural products used by insects of the same species to facilitate mating. The application of pheromones to a field allows for the control of damaging pests while preserving beneficial insects. Provivi’s patented production methods enable a step change in the cost of manufacturing pheromones, allowing use of this proven approach in large-acreage crops such as corn, rice, and soy.

The Digest recently named Provivi one of the NEXT 50 Companies to disrupt the world, and more on that here.

About that, er, other well-known co-founder

In addition to Pedro Coelho and Peter Meinhold, the other co-founder is Caltech’s Frances Arnold, from whose lab this “dystopia for pests” hath spun, if you happened to spend last year visiting the International Space Station or otherwise in cryofreeze, it might have escaped you that Dr. Arnold landed herself a Nobel Prize, and more on that here.

A Multi-Slide Guide to Provivi’s technology and progress

The visual tour is right here, in Birth Control for Insects: The Digest’s 2019 Multi-Slide Guide to Provivi 

Reaction from the stakeholders

“The Series C financing is a significant milestone in the growth of our company and builds upon an exciting year where we scaled the production of key pheromone active ingredients, continued to demonstrate the efficacy of our products in row crops, and worked closely with farmers to demonstrate the value being created by our pheromones in field trials,” said Dr. Pedro Coelho, Co-Founder and CEO of Provivi. “The extraordinary conditions facing growers all over the world caused by invasive pests renews our sense of urgency to scale our solutions.”

“We look forward to partnering with Provivi’s world class team to create an industry leader in high efficacy, sustainable crop protection,” said Dr. Philip Erlanger, co-Managing Partner of Pontifax AgTech. “Regulatory and consumer-driven pressures, coupled with growing pest resistance, necessitate alternatives to traditional chemical applications in crop protection markets. Provivi’s pheromone technology provides growers with a disruptive crop protection technology that directly addresses these needs.” Dr. Erlanger will join the Company’s board of directors. Dr. Barbara Mazur, a globally recognized expert in plant biology and a member of Pontifax AgTech’s Strategic Advisory Board, will serve as a board observer.

The Bottom Line

It’s bigly! It’s Yuuuuge! It’s a Winner! It’s Fantastic!  You could roll out just about any superlative from the Trump Administration playbook, and it’d be a good fit. Excepting #FakeNews!, which this ain’t.

What makes this one particularly interesting is that the company is poised for launching products — we didn’t see “further development” as the lead use of funds. Provivi’s poised for a breakout — so, watch this space.