Tübingen-based BioTech research company Computomics has raised €6.3 million in a Series B round to scale commercial delivery of its climate-smart crop-breeding platform, as heat and drought increasingly take their toll on European harvests.
The Round
The round was led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund, which invested €5 million, with existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), MBG Baden-Württemberg, and Amathaon Capital also participating alongside founders and scientific advisors. The startup also benefits from support from the European Union under the InvestEU Fund.
Stephen McLoughlin, Partner at Convent Capital Agri Food Fund, explained the investment logic: “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.”
The Problem Computomics Is Solving
The Series B lands at a difficult moment for European growers. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has cut its 2026 yield forecasts for all spring and summer crops, with the steepest downgrades hitting maize and sunflower, while France is heading toward one of its weakest maize harvests in decades. The varieties currently planted were bred for a climate that has already moved on.
Founded in 2012 as a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute for Biology and the University of Tübingen, Computomics builds machine learning models that forecast how a specific genotype will perform under a given set of environmental conditions. The models combine genomic data with environmental factors — temperature, rainfall, soil characteristics — alongside field measurements.
These models give breeders answers that trial data alone can’t provide within the time available: which candidates will hold up in hotter, drier conditions, which perform consistently across environments rather than excelling in just one, and where a given variety should be placed. The company’s ×SeedScore® platform runs these predictions at the scale of a full commercial breeding programme, serving customers across field crops, forages, vegetables, and specialty crops.
Dr. Sebastian J. Schultheiss, co-founder and CEO of Computomics, put it simply: “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.”
The Product Portfolio
Computomics’ climate-smart breeding portfolio includes ×SeedScore® alongside CropCompass and BreedScope. Its omics data hub, Pantograph, supports trait discovery through pangenome analysis, while MORPHEUS and MEGAN7 serve microbiome applications.
Dr. Frank Hensel, Principal at High-Tech Gründerfonds, tied the round to national strategy: “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.”
What’s Next
The new capital will be used to scale commercial delivery of Computomics’ climate-smart breeding platform, extending the technology to more breeding programmes at a faster pace.
