Germany’s Computomics raises €6.3 million to help crop breeders tackle heat and drought challenges
Tübingen-based BioTech company Computomics has raised €6.3 million in a Series B funding round. The company will use the funding to expand its climate-smart breeding platform as heat and drought increasingly affect European crops.
The round was led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund, which invested €5 million. Existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), MBG Baden-Württemberg, and Amathaon Capital also joined the round, along with the company’s founders and scientific advisors. Computomics also receives support from the European Union through the InvestEU Fund.
“We back companies whose environmental impact grows with their commercial success. Better breeding predictions mean fewer wasted seasons and varieties that hold up in the field, so the impact case and the business case point the same way. That alignment is why we led this round,” said Stephen McLoughlin, Partner at Convent Capital Agri Food Fund.
The Series B funding comes as European farmers face growing problems from heat and drought. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has lowered its 2026 crop forecasts for all spring and summer crops, with maize and sunflower seeing the biggest cuts. France is also expected to have one of its weakest maize harvests in decades. Many crop varieties being grown today were developed for a climate that is already changing.
Computomics was founded in 2012 as a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute for Biology and the University of Tübingen. The company uses machine learning to predict how a specific plant variety will perform in different environmental conditions. Its technology combines genetic data with information such as temperature, rainfall, soil conditions, and field measurements.
These models help plant breeders make faster and better decisions. They can identify which crop varieties are likely to perform well in hotter and drier conditions, which varieties can perform consistently in different environments, and where a particular variety is most suitable to grow.
Computomics’ ×SeedScore® platform can make these predictions across large commercial breeding programmes. The company works with breeders developing field crops, forages, vegetables, and specialty crops.
“Breeders have never lacked ambition about climate resilience. What they have lacked is a way to see it before the field tells them, which takes years they no longer have. This financing is about getting that capability into far more breeding programs, faster,” said Dr. Sebastian J. Schultheiss, co-founder and CEO of Computomics
Computomics’ climate-smart breeding portfolio includes ×SeedScore®, CropCompass, and BreedScope. Its Pantograph data hub helps researchers discover useful plant traits through pangenome analysis, while MORPHEUS and MEGAN7 are used for microbiome research.
“AI-based breeding of stress-resistant crops is part of the German federal government’s High-Tech Agenda for good reason: it is one of the levers that matter most as the climate shifts. HTGF has supported Computomics since the seed phase and congratulates the team on this growth financing,” said Dr. Frank Hensel, Principal at High-Tech Gründerfonds.
The new funding will help Computomics expand its climate-smart breeding platform and bring its technology to more breeding programmes faster.