Agtech venture capital deal count falls 40% with a rebound unlikely before 2027

Agtech venture capital deal activity is on track to fall roughly 40% in the first half of 2026 against last year’s pace, and investors do not expect a recovery before 2027, according to analysis published by AgNavigator on July 13. Venture capitalists completed 875 agtech deals across all of 2025. Extrapolating the current 2026 trajectory points to a sharp contraction in deal count rather than in dollars.

The distinction matters for anyone raising. Capital has not left the sector so much as it has concentrated, and the companies feeling the squeeze are the ones that have not yet proven a commercial model.

Where the agtech venture capital went

Every one of the top 10 funding rounds in the second quarter went to a late-stage company. Three were in precision agriculture, three in animal and aquaculture, two in crop inputs and enhancements, and one each in vertical farming and farm automation and equipment.

Precision agriculture company Tomorrow.io raised the largest round of the quarter at $210 million in Series F funding. Vertical farming company Oishii followed with $151.6 million in Series C, and Asto CT raised $83.2 million. Insect protein producer InnovaFeed and Laxey rounded out the top five at $59.5 million and $54.4 million respectively.

The pattern is consistent with earlier quarters. Crunchbase data reviewed in May showed agtech startups had raised $1.4 billion through May 7, tracking level with or slightly below the $4.4 billion raised in 2025 and the $4.6 billion in 2024. Deal count, not capital, is where the decline shows up.

Why the correction is still running

The sector remains in a correction that began after the 2021 peak, when agtech and farming startups raised $10.5 billion across 1,419 deals. Many companies that closed large rounds in that period have struggled to show commercial traction, and investors have responded by concentrating capital in businesses with revenue rather than spreading it across early-stage bets.

The exit market is the binding constraint. The initial public offering window has stayed shut, leaving strategic acquisition as the only realistic route out. Eight agtech exits were recorded in the first quarter of 2026, down 33% from 12 in the fourth quarter of 2025, and agtech accounted for about 1.1% of the 727 venture-backed exits globally that quarter. Without exits, limited partners get no distributions, and without distributions there is less capital to recycle into new funds.

What it means for fertilizer and crop input technology

For the nutrient side of agtech, the read is mixed. Crop inputs and enhancements held two of the quarter’s top 10 rounds, and biologicals have drawn a steady flow of financings across recent quarters, suggesting investors still credit input science with defensible technology. Corteva Catalyst has been among the more visible strategic investors in that category.

But a thinner early-stage funnel eventually reaches the fertilizer industry as fewer nitrogen-efficiency, biological and soil-microbiome companies reaching commercial scale in three to five years. Fertilizer Daily reported on July 13 that Wageningen spinout Aardaia raised $5.9 million to develop a nitrogen-fixing potato alternative, the kind of seed-stage deal that becomes rarer in a contracting market.

Outlook

Analysts quoted by AgNavigator described 2026 as the bottom of the cycle rather than the year of recovery, expecting deal activity to stabilize in the second half without a clear rebound until 2027, when the exit market may reopen and limited partner capital loosen. Any second-half improvement is more likely to appear in total dollars than in deal count, driven by a handful of larger late-stage rounds. There is no reliable seasonal tailwind that lifts the sector in the back half of the year. Fertilizer Daily set out five investment themes expected to attract agtech capital in 2026 on July 1.

Source: AgNavigator

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