Key Takeaways
- At least 21 AgTech-related bankruptcies and liquidations were recorded in 2025 across insect farming, vertical farming, greenhouse technology, drones, biotech, and digital platforms.
- More than $2.8 billion in disclosed venture capital was tied to companies that entered bankruptcy, liquidation, or court-supervised restructuring during the year.
- Insect farming represented the most concentrated cluster of failures, including Ÿnsect, ENORM, Inseco, and BeoBia.
- Several failed companies had raised late-stage capital (Series B–D), pointing to scale-up risk rather than early-stage experimentation failure.
- High energy costs, infrastructure intensity, slow commercialization, and reliance on continued fundraising emerged as recurring pressure points across sectors.
Capital Wiped Out in 2025: Funding Losses and Valuation Resets For AgTech
Bankruptcies and restructurings across the AgTech sector in 2025 were accompanied by significant capital impairment. Based on disclosed funding data, companies that entered bankruptcy, liquidation, or formal restructuring had raised slightly over $2.8 billion prior to these events. This figure reflects disclosed equity funding only and excludes undisclosed rounds and non-equity financing, suggesting total capital exposure may be higher.
Funding concentration was uneven. A small number of companies accounted for a disproportionate share of capital affected. Plenty, which entered restructuring proceedings in 2025, had raised approximately $961 million. Benson Hill had raised roughly $602 million before filing for bankruptcy.
Several additional companies with funding in the $50–60 million range also ceased operations or entered bankruptcy, including Eden Green Technology, ENORM, Freight Farms, Oerth Bio, and Guardian Agriculture. While smaller in scale, these cases contributed meaningfully to aggregate capital losses.
Sector-Level Exposure
When viewed by sector, vertical farming accounted for the largest share of disclosed funding associated with AgTech Bankruptcy in 2025, totaling approximately $1.425 billion across ten recorded bankruptcies. This reflects both the number of failures and the capital intensity of controlled-environment production models.
Insect farming followed with approximately $670 million in disclosed funding tied to bankruptcies, largely driven by European and African operators. Greenhouse solution providers recorded four bankruptcies, with roughly $15.15 million in disclosed funding, reflecting generally lower capital intensity. Additional bankruptcies were recorded in biotechnology, drones, marketplaces, and crop genomics.
Geographic Distribution of AgTech Bankruptcies
Geographically, the United States represented the largest share of disclosed funding associated with bankruptcies, at approximately $2.1 billion. France followed with around $608 million, largely linked to Ÿnsect. Other countries with disclosed funding exposure included the United Kingdom, Denmark, Switzerland, India, South Africa, and Italy.
This geographic spread indicates that AgTech Bankruptcy in 2025 was not confined to a single regulatory or market environment, but reflected broader structural pressures.
When Bankruptcy Was Avoided: Assets Acquired at a Discount
Not all distressed situations resulted in full liquidation. In several cases, assets continued under new ownership through acquisitions completed during or shortly after insolvency proceedings. Purchase prices are often undisclosed, but discussions with industry participants indicate that many transactions occurred at “pennies on the dollar.”
Examples include Growcer’s acquisition of Freight Farms’ assets in July 2025 and PB Tec’s acquisition of CE-Line assets in the Netherlands. These cases suggest that asset-backed businesses—facilities, equipment, IP, or operating teams—were more likely to attract buyers, even when equity value was largely written off.
It is important to note that not all M&A transactions in 2025 involved distressed assets or restructuring scenarios.
What the 2025 Data Suggests Going Into 2026
The 2025 AgTech Bankruptcy data points to persistent structural pressures: high fixed costs, reliance on continued capital access, and operational complexity. While capital continued to flow into AgTech, funding increasingly favored selective structures such as bridges, convertibles, and venture debt, alongside fewer but sizable late-stage rounds.
Looking into early 2026, additional bankruptcies and restructurings appear likely among companies operating under prolonged financial strain. At the same time, firms with demonstrated revenue traction, repeat deployments, or scalable commercial models are expected to continue attracting capital, suggesting that funding will remain unevenly distributed across the sector.
Access the full dataset, charts, and company-level breakdowns here.
