Key Takeaways
- 80 Acres Farms, one of the largest US vertical farming companies, is winding down its indoor growing operations.
- CEO and co-founder Mike Zelkind said the company could not secure the capital needed to continue.
- Founded in 2015 in Cincinnati and later based in Hamilton, Ohio, 80 Acres Farms grew to eight farms and supplied more than 18,000 retail locations.
- The company raised roughly $390 million across six rounds since 2016, including a $160 million Series B in 2021 led by General Atlantic and about $115 million more in 2024.
- The closure reflects broader strain in vertical farming, where high energy and infrastructure costs have pressured thin margins.
80 Acres Farms, among the best-known names in US indoor agriculture, is shutting down. The Hamilton, Ohio-based company said on Monday it will begin winding down its large-scale indoor growing operations after a decade of building automated vertical farms.
80 Acres Farms Winds Down Indoor Growing
“After an exhaustive effort to find a way forward, 80 Acres Farms is winding down operations,” the company said in its announcement. “Unfortunately, under current circumstances, we could not secure the capital required to continue that work,” said Mike Zelkind, CEO and co-founder in an interview with WVXU. The company said its farms ultimately supplied more than 18,000 retail locations across the country.
A Decade of Vertical Farming
Zelkind and co-founder Tisha Livingston started the business in Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Village in 2015, moved it to Hamilton in 2019 and opened an eighth farm in Florence, Kentucky in 2023. A prominent name in vertical farming, the company grew leafy greens and herbs indoors in stacked rows under climate control, using less water and land than field farming and cutting transport times by siting farms near cities. Its technology work extended through affiliate Infinite Acres.
The Funding That Built 80 Acres Farms
80 Acres Farms raised roughly $390 million from investors across six rounds over its lifetime. That included a $10 million seed in 2016, a $40 million round in 2019 and a $40 million Series A in 2020, a $160 million Series B in 2021 led by General Atlantic with Siemens Financial Services, a $25 million bridge in 2022, and roughly $115 million in 2024 from backers such as General Atlantic, Siemens Financial Services, The Western and Southern Life Insurance Company, Barclays Climate Ventures, Virgo Investment Group and Blue Earth Capital. The funding underwrote large automated facilities, including a major plant in Boone County, Kentucky.
A Tough Stretch for Vertical Farming
The closure lands as the wider indoor-farming sector contracts. After heavy venture investment in the 2010s, high energy and infrastructure costs have squeezed already-thin agricultural margins, a strain felt across controlled environment agriculture. Zelkind maintained the model still has a future. “We have seen vertical farming’s potential up close, and we still believe that this industry is just getting started, and that we have helped plant the seeds for generations of future harvests,” he said in the interview with WVXU.
