Plenty, a vertical farming startup backed by SoftBank and Jeff Bezos, entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday.
The move is a blow to the quickly shrinking vertical farming sector. Plenty had raised over $900 million in venture funding—more than the now-defunct Bowery Farming, which was its chief rival.
But its collapse comes as little surprise: The vertical farming sector has sharply declined over the last two years as investors have pulled back and the cost of capital has spiked. Across agtech, the annual total of venture investment has continued to decline year-over-year since its peak in 2021 and is returning to pre-pandemic levels, according to PitchBook data.
Plenty will continue to operate its vertical strawberry farm in Virginia and its plant science R&D facility in Wyoming as it undergoes its restructuring process, the company said in its announcement.
In January 2022, Plenty was riding high. The company had just raised a $400 million Series E at a $1.9 billion valuation led by One Madison Group and JS Capital Management, and it announced a partnership with Walmart. At the time, Plenty and its peers were taking advantage of the ZIRP era by raising piles of cash and spending it on R&D.
Plenty opened its flagship California facility, the Plenty Compton Farm, in May 2023, to grow four types of leafy greens for Bristol Farms, Whole Foods, Walmart and Singapore Airlines.
But, as many other vertical farming startups had already learned, there is a big gap between what consumers are willing to pay for leafy greens and the costs of vertical farming. Even with its unique ability to grow multiple crops on its singular, modular platform, Plenty couldn’t bridge that gap.
This disconnect has been the main challenge for a vertical whose infrastructure requires expensive capital to build out physical infrastructure and cover energy and water bills on top of technological investment.
Eventually, Plenty recognized the limits of leafy greens. In December 2024, the company said it had closed its Compton farm just 18 months after its opening, citing high energy costs. Plenty said it would instead focus on the strawberry market.
One of the holdouts of the industry has been the organic strawberries and tomatoes grower Oishii, which sells its designer strawberries at Whole Foods stores for a significantly higher price than conventionally grown berries. Oishii’s revenue jumped tenfold between 2021 and early 2024, Oishii’s founder previously told PitchBook.
But for Plenty, it appears that its pivot came too late. In January, Bloomberg reported at the time, after failing to raise a large funding round at favorable terms, Plenty attempted an 11th-hour cram-down financing that would wipe out existing shareholders—a sign that the farming startup was circling the drain.
Hand-out/Plenty Unlimited Inc.
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