Flagship Pioneering Unveils Inari Agriculture

Led by Experienced Team of Scientists and Agricultural Leaders, Company Brings Unique Science and Data Platform to Transform Plant Breeding

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Flagship Pioneering

Jul 18, 2018, 08:00 ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Flagship Pioneering, a unique life sciences innovation enterprise, today unveiled the firm's latest agriculture company: Inari Agriculture. The company's mission is to transform agriculture and its impact on society and the environment by developing new plant breeding approaches.

Formed in 2016, Inari is the newest member of Flagship's family of agricultural companies that aim to feed and fuel the world. "We are committed to building our agriculture life sciences platform at Flagship Pioneering to help the world solve one of its most pressing problems: how to grow crops while also taking care of the planet," said Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship. "The Flagship team conceived, capitalized, and grew Inari within our enterprise for over two years, and we are proud to see it spun-out today."

A Pioneering Approach
Inari aims to substantially reduce breeding time and cost. The company unites biological and data sciences to provide its scientists and plant breeding partners with unprecedented capabilities to breed new crops better suited for local environments. The approach will allow growers and other partners to use less land, water, and other inputs to produce food and feed.

Inari's roots at Flagship began in 2016, when the firm's team of entrepreneurial scientists began to imagine opportunities in plant breeding as part of explorations Flagship was performing in human health. The company grew in stealth under the leadership of Flagship general partner Ignacio Martinez as founding CEO and general partner David Berry as co-founder. Ponsi Trivisvavet, who was formerly chief operating officer at Flagship Pioneering company Indigo Agriculture, was named CEO in April 2018.

"We are very proud of the past 24 months of progress," said Martinez. "Our scientists have developed breakthrough technologies in multiple scientific areas, while developing a growing portfolio of intellectual property. We are equally excited about the unique and experienced team of scientists and scientific advisors that we have brought on board."

An Experienced Scientific and Leadership Team
Since its founding, Inari has recruited more than 80 leading research scientists and academic advisors with diverse backgrounds in the sciences, from plant biology to medical research.

"I am thrilled to be working with exceptional people at Inari focusing on transforming plant breeding technologies and applying them to address innovation challenges," said Trivisvavet. "We have assembled a world-class team to execute on Inari's mission and believe we have a unique opportunity to change the culture of agriculture. Over the coming months our priority is to accelerate the deployment of our technologies into crops while increasing our cutting-edge technology and patent pool. Our future is going to be exciting—we look forward to empowering our partners and growers by giving them more choice and access to our technologies."

To learn more about Inari, visit www.inari.com.

About Inari Agriculture
Founded by Flagship Pioneering, a unique life sciences innovation enterprise, Inari Agriculture is a plant breeding technology company on a mission to transform agriculture and its impact on society and the environment. Inari's platform combines biological and data sciences to create approaches that significantly reduce the land, water, and other inputs required to produce food and feed.

About Flagship Pioneering
Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has applied a unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in over $25 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has attracted $2.4 billion of aggregate capital commitments, of which over $1.3 billion has been deployed toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside $8.3 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem includes public companies such as Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS), as well as private companies such as Kaleido Biosciences, Indigo Agriculture, CiBO Technologies, and Moderna Therapeutics. To learn more about Flagship Pioneering, please visit our website: www.FlagshipPioneering.com.

SOURCE Flagship Pioneering