2025: A Year in Review
By: Mikayla Mooney
We just released the Ag Startup Engine 2025 Report (you can read it here).
If I had to describe the year in one word, it wouldn’t be collapse….or contraction…or even reset.
It would be: filter.
Capital didn’t disappear in 2025. We just saw it get more disciplined.
At Ag Startup Engine we completed diligence on 134 startups this year, and the pattern was pretty clear. The funding is there, but it was selective. Investors weren’t looking for headlines or setting valuations based on “what could be.” It felt like we were operating in a much more grounded world of what was actually working.
The companies that closed rounds had real customer pull. Real unit economics. And a clear path to commercialization.
You could see it most clearly in the harder categories, robotics, some biological platforms, and anything tied to long regulatory cycles. Hype gave way to adoption math.
A lot of the capital from the last run-up cycle is locked up in late-stage bets. Liquidity across the system is tighter than it looks from the outside. LPs haven’t seen meaningful distributions in a while, which makes it harder for funds to raise what’s next. When that happens, everyone gets more selective. Investors aren’t deploying just to deploy, they’re choosing investments more carefully.
Early-stage funding didn’t get easier. It just got more rational.
The founders building right now understand agriculture. They’re planning for margin compression. Slower procurement cycles. International pilots. Multiple liquidity paths. They’re building companies that assume reality….not best-case scenarios.
And across our portfolio, that grounded approach showed up in numbers:
Nearly $39M in revenue generated in 2025
Over $29M in non-dilutive funding secured
More than 11,000 farmers and producers served
Operations across 6.5 million acres
Impact on 700M+ pounds of food and nearly 500M livestock
That’s what real execution looks like. Not oversized rounds. Not inflated valuations.
Revenue. Adoption. Non-dilutive capital that extends runway without distorting ownership. Those are the metrics that matter.
If 2025 filtered for resilience, it also clarified our role at Ag Startup Engine.
We’re not just writing checks. In this kind of environment, capital is only part of the equation. Access matters. Feedback matters. Customers matter. Strategic partners matter. The right introduction at the right time can change the trajectory of a company.
Going into 2026, the question I keep coming back to isn’t about instruments or valuation mechanics. It’s definition.
What does success in agtech actually mean right now? And more importantly, how should we be supporting it?
I don’t think we’re operating in a venture-scale-or-bust environment anymore. Agriculture has never fit neatly into that model.
What I see instead are founders building durable, profitable companies that solve real problems and return capital, even if the outcomes don’t resemble a Silicon Valley headline.
If that’s the reality, then our role as investors has to match it.
That means helping founders think about building companies that are capital efficient from day one. It means pressure-testing distribution early. It means surrounding them with customers and operators who will tell the truth. And in a rapidly changing world of AI, it means helping them think clearly about where AI actually creates leverage.
We’ve been hearing about AI for quite some time and it’s already showing up across agriculture. The question is whether founders use it to become a feature…or an advantage.
In this environment, resilience isn’t just about surviving tight capital markets. It’s about building real defensibility, operationally, financially, and now technologically.
That’s the work that’s needed to be successful in 2026.
If you haven’t read the full report yet, you can find it here.
And as always, if you’re building in agriculture, or thinking about it, we’d love to talk!