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Steve Case, the man who co-founded America Online and injected the jingle "You've got mail!" into the American lexicon is now trying to steer venture capitalists and their money to areas they've typically overlooked. Mostly, small towns and cities in the middle of the country. His vehicle to do that is a $150 million dollar investment fund and a 35-foot long, bright red bus. We joined the billionaire on his bus for a recent road trip and soon found ourselves aiming for the edge of a wheat field in Tennessee. Steve Case is here to meet a few entrepreneurs who say they've created a new technology that could revolutionize the way America farms.
U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, led a bipartisan group of Senators in sending a letter to President Donald Trump supporting ag biotech that advocates for “the continued prioritization of a timely, transparent, and science-based system for the approvals of agricultural biotechnology products.”
University-backed med-tech and pharma startups like Nagler's have become more common as big companies grow increasingly reluctant to finance early-stage discoveries. The resulting investment gap could threaten universities' efforts to commercialize technologies developed in their research labs.
Flagship Pioneering has raised $824 million for a new fund to support biotech and health companies that have come up through its Flagship Labs foundry. The capital comes from “new institutional investors and family officers” as well as “long-time limited partners” and follows a similar fund closed in 2016.
