Thrive Agritech, a technology company focused on innovations in LED horticulture lighting (“Thrive”), has received an additional $2 million in equity capital to accelerate the development and deployment of its LED technology in controlled environment agriculture. The investmentround was led by Rose Capital, a New York-based institutional investor. In conjunction with the investment round, Rose Capital has also joined Thrive’s Board of Directors.
The financing round – and new partnership with Rose Capital – follows an exceptional year for Thrive Agritech, which saw a rapidly expanding customer base with lighting installations in greenhouses, vertical farms and cannabis production facilities across North America.
Rose Capital noted, “We are excited about this investment based on the extraordinary customer adoption that Thrive has experienced since its first product launch in 2015. Thrive has established a successful track record of commercializing best-in-class LED lighting products – having launched a new product every year since the Company’s inception. We look forward to partnering with Thrive to continue to break down traditional industry barriers and commercialize some of the most innovative products in the global horticultural market.”
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that food production must increase by 70 percent over the next 40 years to satisfy increasing demand. The total market in North America for LED lighting solutions for greenhouses is expected to grow from 2.5 million square feet in 2015 to more than 50 million square feet in 2021. In response to these trends, companies like Thrive are introducing high output lighting solutions to change the efficiency dynamic for global growers.
“Our biggest challenge today is responding to the overwhelming number of opportunities with which we are being confronted,” said Thrive Agritech CEO Brian Bennett. “As we close this investment round, we will be aggressively hiring sales, marketing, and operations support, and leveraging Rose Capital’s expertise, to exceed the expectations of our customers and further develop our product portfolio and core technologies. Additionally, we will be expanding operations into Europe to capture growth in the emerging greenhouse supplemental lighting market.”
Thrive Agritech was founded at the Y Combinator accelerator in Silicon Valley, with a mission to enhance sustainability for controlled environment agriculture. The company’s industry leading energy efficient lighting products have already made significant reductions in the carbon footprint from older lighting technologies. Further, all Thrive Agritech products have an optimized horticulture light spectrum, high reliability, and most importantly improve efficiency and longevity of horticultural crop growth.
Thrive Agritech is a developer and manufacturer of products for the controlled environment agriculture industry. The company’s patent-pending technologies enable unique advantages for horticultural solid-state lighting and controls. Corporate headquarters are located in New York City. For more information, visit http://www.thriveagritech.com
