“We are excited to announce that Rift Labs’ has raised $1.7M in new funding to fuel our growth in vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture. We have already secured commercial contracts and great interest from global players for our vertical farming solutions during our recent participation in the Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit in New York, and now we are utilizing this momentum to scale and expand internationally.” says Halvard Aagaard, CEO of Rift Labs in a recent press release.
The round was led by the largest shareholder Karbon Invest along with substantial participation from existing shareholders. Bulk Industrier with Peder Nærbø was invited on- board as a new investor and participated in the round, joining the list of prominent existing investors such as Carucel Finance and Datum Invest.
Enables experimentation with production setup and plants with Hydroponics Lab
Rift Labs has been working with partners ONNA and Crayon since autumn 2020 to develop the Hydroponics Lab system, a project which has been supported by Innovation Norway and RFF Viken. The system especially makes use of Rift Labs’ advanced dynamic LED lighting, traditionally reserved for other industries such as photo and video, which enables extremely precise and high-quality light in different wavelengths to be continuously optimized for plant growth.
Halvard Aagaard, CEO of Rift Labs, says further on:
“We aim to become the world’s leading technology partner for controlled environment agriculture using our patented LED technology and software control systems based on AI and machine learning. We are the only company today that are offering a solution like this on the market”
According to Fortune Business Insights, the market for vertical farming is expected to grow significantly from $3.47bn in 2021 to $20.91bn in 2029 with a CAGR of over 25% due to continued ESG-focus in food production, combined with ever increasing uncertainty in global supply-chains and desire to improve self-reliance. With a huge demand for innovative LED lighting solutions, Rifts Labs is perfectly positioned to become a leader in this industry.
Why has Bulk Industrier invested in Rift Labs?
Through Bulk Industrier, Peder Nærbø founded Bulk Infrastructure Group in 2006 to create sustainability as a business. Bulk started to move logistics out of Oslo to improve the air quality in the city and since used its know-how from industrial real estate to develop a scalable platform for digital infrastructure to get access to renewable energy in the Nordics. This led to scale developments of data center campuses and subsea and terrestrial fiber networks linking the Nordics to a global market.
“With large scalable data center sites in our portfolio, Bulk Industrier is interested in reuse of heat from data centers and believe greenhouse and vertical farming production to have great synergies in co-locating into circular industrial parks. To create the optimal yield for agriculture or aquaculture products to grow in these controlled environments the industry will depend on smart solutions and complete digitalization. This is where we believe Rift Labs is very well positioned to make significant impact” says Peder Nærbø, owner and chair of Bulk Industrier.
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