ATN: Inari raised one of the largest venture capital rounds of 2024 before completing a new $144 million fundraise at the start of this year. How will you spend the funds?
LSW: This investment enables us to further scale up and progress toward commercialisation, bringing our breakthrough products into the hands of our seed company customers.
At Inari, we aim to significantly increase soybean, corn and wheat yields without increasing inputs. We are already making meaningful progress in all three crops. This funding helps further advance our cutting-edge capabilities in AI-powered predictive design and multiplex gene editing so we can develop even more impactful step-change solutions.
ATN: Can you provide more details on Inari’s commercialisation timeline for its first products in soybeans, corn, and wheat?
LSW: As the company SEEDesign, we provide advanced breeding solutions to seed companies, and they ultimately decide when and how to market their resulting products to farmers.
There’s a key reason for this approach: relationships. These seed companies have incredibly deep, often incredibly long-held connections with their farmers, so they know what their customers need.
Closest to commercialisation are our first-generation high-yielding soybeans. Our customers will bulk up products for commercialisation soon, and in the meantime, their farmers can see our edited plants this summer at demo plots across the US.
Higher-yielding corn and wheat products are not far behind, with both currently being tested in the field.
ATN: How does Inari’s technology differ from other approaches in the seed industry?
LSW: One of the key components of our multiplex gene editing toolbox is that it enables us to not only make multiple simultaneous edits in multiple locations, but also multiple types of edits.
For example, in addition to turning genes on and off – what is often referred to as “gene knockouts” – we can also dial a gene’s expression up and down, like a dimmer. This enables us to make incredibly precise improvements.
We also recognise that simply having the ability to make edits isn’t enough to drive meaningful change – it’s also critical to know where and how to edit. That’s why we pair our editing toolbox with AI-powered predictive design, which taps into powerful data analytics to discover new genetic pathways and predict which edits and edit types will deliver the most optimal outcomes.
ATN: You want to deliver impactful solutions that benefit both your seed customers and the planet… what does real impact look like?
LSW: It’s important to acknowledge that agriculture has been a true success story for society and the world at large, but current practices are also increasingly unsustainable. Meanwhile, progress in seed has stagnated – for example, the annual average yield increase in corn, soybeans and wheat has been around just 1% for three decades. That’s simply not enough when the global population continues to grow, food security is being challenged, and extreme weather conditions are increasingly common.
At Inari, our bold long-term goals include increasing these crops’ yields by 10% to 20% – or, put another way, 10 to 20 times what farmers have gotten used to – without requiring additional inputs. That’s real impact.
ATN: You license your tech to other agricultural companies. Is this risky?
LSW: We don’t view collaborating with multiple partners as risky. The challenges we are working to address – food security, climate, farmer well-being – are far too big for any one or two organisations to address alone. Broad collaboration is a necessity if we are going to ensure a more sustainable food system for generations to come.
We prioritise strong partner relationships, working with organisations that share a similar vision of the seed industry’s future.
Credit: feednavigator.com
