intellectual property rights
Cresco is proud to have advised Liftt and LifttEU as lead investors in their investment in Rainbow Crops, a Belgian agri-tech start-up combining AI, multi-omics and multiplex genome editing to systematically improve complex agronomic traits such as yield and stress resilience in crops. Rainbow Crops raised EUR 9,700,000.00 in funding from Liftt, LifttEU, Agri Investment Fund, VIB, Pioneer HI-Bred International (Corteva), Pinc Via Paulig and Praesidium (MAIA Ventures).
Through its proprietary Trait Foundry™ platform, Rainbow Crops generates edited plant populations with combinations of genetic modifications designed to maximize complex trait performance, addressing one of the fundamental challenges in modern agriculture that traditional breeding and single-gene strategies have been unable to solve.
Liftt is an Italian venture investor known for its lean, fast and hands-on approach to early-stage innovation, backing startups from pre-seed through seed with capital, coaching and a strong international network. LifttEU, established in partnership with the European Investment Bank (EIB), amplifies this mission by co-investing alongside Liftt to support the next generation of European deep-tech companies.
We congratulate Rainbow Crops, its founder and CEO Giacomo Bastianelli, and the entire Liftt and LifttEU team on this milestone, and we extend our sincere thanks to Edoardo Bianchi, Luca Salerno and Cristina Odasso for the excellent collaboration throughout this transaction.
The Cresco deal team consisted of David Dessers and Nicholas Borgmans (corporate) and Ward Verwaeren and Axel Desmet(IP).
More information can be found in De Tijd en VIB‘s press release.
