Evogene and their Subsidiaries Announce Partnerships with Syngenta and Bayer Crop Science
Who is Evogene and what do the partnerships mean
Evogene is a public entity, founded in 1999 as a division of Compugen and then spun off in 2002.
Today, Evogene has five subsidiaries and three artificial intelligence engines driven by what they call a “computational predictive biology” platform, or CPB Platform.
The CPB platform is used for product discovery and development, utilizing comprehensive computational biology to increase the effectiveness of finding suitable molecules while reducing the time and cost of product development.
Evogene tailored the platform to have three separate focuses:
Microboost AI - supports the discovery and development of microbe-based products.
ChemPass AI - supports products based on genetic elements
GeneRator AI - supports genomic understanding and gene identification
Source: Evogene
Evogene's approach is to establish a product development ecosystem around each tech engine, through two business structures:
Create independent subsidiaries, focusing on specific life science market segments with a license to use Evogene’s tech engines for product development, or;
Joint development with leading companies for defined products utilizing Evogene’s tech-engines. Typically, the partner leads later-stage development and product commercialization.
Of Evogene’s five subsidiaries, four are agriculture-related (with the first two being of the most interest for North American agribusiness professionals and especially of note this week with their partnership announcements, more below):
Lavie Bio: Lavie Bio is dedicated to developing next-generation ag-biological products. It uses Evogene’s MicroBoost AI tech engine for its developments.
AgPlenus: This subsidiary is focused on discovering innovative crop protection products, such as herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides. AgPlenus leverages the ChemPass AI tech engine to identify small molecules and novel target proteins for the development of new pesticides.
Casterra: Casterra is developing solutions for the industrialized cultivation of castor beans, aiming to meet the global demand for castor oil supply, primarily for the biodiesel industry and more prominent in Africa.
Canonic: Focused on medical cannabis, Canonic aims to develop best-in-class products using Evogene’s GeneRator AI tech engine.
Revenues across all entities are small, and losses are still in the millions each quarter. What is notable is that they continue to gain traction with prominent agribusiness players, leading to investments, partnerships, and exclusive agreements.