Billionaire-Backed Fund Invests in Pivot Bio’s $70m Series B to Address ‘One of Largest Sources of GHGs on Planet’

Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the $1 billion fund focused on accelerating the world’s transition to clean energy, has invested in the $70 million Series B round for Pivot Bio. Pivot Bio is an agtech startup producing microbes that are applied to crops to make nitrogen available to them and could reduce the use of synthetic fertilizers. Singapore state fund Temasek also joined the round as a new investor. Noticeably absent from the investor line-up was Bayer Growth Ventures, the post-merger version of Monsanto Growth Ventures, which invested in Pivot Bio at Series A. Last year, Bayer created a joint venture with microbe-farming group Ginkgo Bioworks — Joyn Bio — to find microbes that might also reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizer, according to a press release.Breakthrough Energy Ventures is backed by a consortium of leading entrepreneurs, investors, finance institutions and corporations including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff.