Heritable Agriculture Secures $5M Grant for AI-Driven Crop Resilience in Africa

AI and “Omics” Power New Gates Foundation-funded Initiative to Develop Climate-Resilient Crops for Smallholder Farmers Globally.

SAN CARLOS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Heritable Agriculture Inc., a leader in AI-driven crop improvement spun out of Google X, announced today that it has received a $4.98M grant from the Gates Foundation. The funding will support the development of the "Joint AI-driven Smallholder Omics aNalytics" (JASON) project, focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and multiple “omics” technologies to create climate-resilient crops for smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

The project's purpose is to develop AI-based tools that identify gene targets and climate-adapted germplasm to improve crop resilience against challenging conditions such as drought and heat. This initiative is a critical step in advancing the foundation’s strategic goal of using digital innovation to reduce climate-related yield loss in smallholder agriculture.

"This project will allow us to stand up a cloud-based AI genomics engine, dramatically accelerating the discovery and deployment of climate-resilient germplasm,” said Tim Beissinger, CTO of Heritable Agriculture. “We anticipate cutting conventional breeding cycle time, transforming raw sequence data into high-confidence edit targets."

Beyond a validation of Heritable’s technical capabilities, the grant exemplifies Heritable’s mission to improve the lives of all through agricultural innovation.

"This investment from the Gates Foundation shows strong support for our approach of combining AI, remote sensing, and omics data for global impact,” said Brad Zamft, CEO of Heritable Agriculture. “A project like JASON represents over a decade of hard work from our team members shaping and sculpting a vision of an agricultural company that serves the global community, does good for the world, and builds a scalable business, all at the same time. I am so proud, and excited, to be working with the Gates Foundation on such an important and impactful project."

The Acute Impact of Extreme Weather on Smallholder Farmers in LMICs

Extreme weather, particularly escalating drought and heat, poses an existential threat to smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries, who produce up to 80% of the food consumed in these regions. These farmers often rely solely on rain-fed agriculture and possess limited resources to adapt to climatic shocks. Prolonged drought leads to complete crop failure, depleting food reserves, eliminating income, and driving severe economic hardship and debt. Simultaneously, extreme heat stresses crops beyond their physiological tolerance, causing wilting, reduced yields, and increased vulnerability to pests and diseases. The cumulative effect of these stressors is a cycle of chronic food insecurity, malnutrition, and displacement, undermining decades of development progress and perpetuating poverty across vulnerable communities.

Heritable's AI-Driven Solution for Climate Resilience

Heritable Agriculture Inc. uses a cutting-edge AI genomics engine to combine artificial intelligence with omics and remote sensing data, dramatically accelerating the development of climate-resilient germplasm. The technology works by mining ancient and modern crop genomes to identify functional gene targets that improve a crop's resilience against challenging conditions like drought and extreme heat. By transforming raw sequence data into high-confidence edit targets and feeding multiplex-editing designs into product development, Heritable expects to cut the conventional breeding cycle time, reducing the path from gene discovery to deployable germplasm. This accelerated timeline is critical for providing farmers in LMICs with the climate-resilient crops they urgently need to secure their livelihoods, ensure food security, and break the cycle of poverty driven by climatic shocks.

Project Highlights:

• AI Genomics Engine: Establish a cloud-based AI platform to mine crop genomes.
• Accelerated Breeding: Predict functional alleles and feed multiplex-editing designs into product development pipelines, reducing the timeline for gene discovery.

About Heritable Agriculture Inc.

Heritable Agriculture Inc. is a company focused on advancing all corners of the agricultural system - all crops, all locations, all traits. Located in San Carlos, California, the company is committed to applying advanced genomics, remote sensing, and AI to solve critical challenges in food security and crop development globally.