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Posted May 29, 2019
Agtech startup AppHarvest has secured an $82 million investment from Equilibrium Capital’s Controlled Environment Foods Fund to build its 60-acre high-tech greenhouse in Morehead, Kentucky.
In addition to the cash infusion, the startup has also raised a Series A equity round of an undisclosed amount, led by ValueAct Spring Fund with participation from existing investor Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
CEO Jonathan Webb shares that the Series A funds are earmarked for building out the startup’s team in advance of the facility opening in 2020. The $82 million, meanwhile, will go directly toward construction.
“We’ve grown our staff considerably [in the last year], bought our property and started construction, but I’m most proud of our community work,” Webb tells Hypepotamus.
Webb founded AppHarvest as a way to provide high-paying jobs, alternative education, and new methods of farming to Kentucky, one of the U.S. states with the highest unemployment rates after the loss of the area’s coal mining jobs.