In an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Lewis & Clark Ventures, IUNU raises $24 million to grow its market positioning and product offering. This funding round has seen existing shareholders S2G Ventures, Ceres Partners and Astanor Ventures participate. As part of the Series B, Suhas Narayanaswamy, Principal at Lewis and Clark AgriFood has joined the IUNU Board of Directors.
Founded in 2013, the Seattle-based company has grown into powering some of the largest CEA operations in the world, the company has since worked with leading companies, from Greenhouses to Vertical Farming companies, examples include:
- Pure Green Farms
- Hollandia Produce
- CubicFarm Systems Corp (TSX: CUB)
- Red-Hat Co-operative
- Jamco Growers
- Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS)
As per their most recent press release, the company now covers more than 25% of the North American leafy green market and 74% of the top leafy greens greenhouse growers in North America run on IUNU’s LUNA platform. Testimonials from current growers include an increase in revenues and yield, decreased labour cost and important improvements to the quality of their crops thanks to an acute detection and prevention system offered by the platform. Building on their experience and the data collected on their current clients, IUNU now has developed one of the largest production datasets in the industry, adding more value to future clients who will benefit from their database.
In recent months, to meet customer requirements, the company had to increase staff by 50% and successfully deployed hundreds of their robotic solutions with 500 to be deployed in upcoming months. The company claims to have deployed more robots than any other company currently on the market.
“IUNU has an unmatchable stack of comprehensive product offerings that have been built and refined since 2013 making them the technology of choice for greenhouse and vertical farming operations,” said Suhas Narayanaswamy, Principal at Lewis and Clark AgriFood. “We are thrilled to be part of a company that is enabling the world’s largest CEA companies to be more efficient and ultimately enable consumers to access better quality fresh produce.”
“Greenhouse and vertical farming solve critical issues around food security, food safety and scarcity. IUNU’s technology brings incredible efficiency gains to indoor farming and is providing the foundation for data-driven indoor growing operations going forward,” said Cristina Rohr, Managing Director at S2G Ventures.
The CEA market is experiencing unprecedented growth right now. To address this growth, the company has recently completed two acquisitions of leading companies in the industry: Artemis and CropWalk and completed a brand refresh. IUNU is the market leader in providing proven and trusted technologies to CEA growers and this latest round of funding will be used to continue expanding its market presence.
“This round of investment reflects the confidence institutional investors have in us. The conversation around autonomous growing has accelerated in the past year, and we’re proud to be leading the way on this front. We couldn’t be more excited to add Lewis and Clark as a partner and to have our existing investors continue growing with us,” said Adam Greenberg, CEO of IUNU.
“The CEA market has finally come to a point of proven expansion and we’re honoured to be trusted by commercial operators who run their businesses on the LUNA Platform. This investment will be used to continue fueling our growth as we become the largest advanced technology company in the CEA industry,” said Allison Kopf, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Data Products at IUNU.
