USA – Pontifax AgTech Management, a Santa Monica, CA-based global growth capital investor in the global food and agriculture sector, closed its second fund, Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund II, with commitments totaling $302m.
Fund II, which brought the firm’s current total AUM to $465M, received commitments from institutional investors, comprised of domestic and international financial institutions, state pension funds, university endowments, foundations, investment firms, large-scale growers and family offices. Pontifax AgTech invests globally in commercially established businesses with proven technologies that improve the productivity, sustainability and efficiency of the food and agriculture supply chain. The firm’s principals work with a proprietary network of growers, technology experts and strategic corporate partners to thoroughly evaluate and maximize the success of the Fund’s investments. Led by Ben Belldegrun, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, and Phil Erlanger, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Fund II completed an inaugural investment in Provivi, whose biological crop protection technology enables the production of low-cost pheromones that sustainably disrupt the mating patterns of invasive crop insects. The firm’s initial fund, closed at $105 million in October 2017, has monetized two investments through the sale of Blue River Technology, a next generation robotics and automation technology for crop cultivation, to John Deere and the IPO of Precision Biosciences, a developer of gene editing technology with application to both human therapeutics and sustainable food traits. 09/10/2020
