St. Louis-based startup Pluton Biosciences last week announced the closing of its Seed Round, raising a total of $6.61 million in new investments. 

 

“With this new round of capital, we’ll be able to build Pluton’s value as an innovative force, providing solutions to the climate and agriculture challenges of our time. Credit goes to the leadership and science team who generated the results to make this all possible,” said Pluton Founder and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Barry Goldman. 

 

Founded in 2017, Pluton Biosciences is a natural product development company dedicated to discovering new microbes that drive environmental sustainability practices worldwide. Pluton’s current product efforts focus on agriculture, using microbes to fight climate change and replacing synthetic chemical applications with eco-friendly microbial products. Pluton uses its Micromining Innovation Engine, a high-throughput microbial discovery platform, to identify and isolate novel organisms within months to dramatically improve R&D throughput for agtech companies.  

 

Pluton is currently collaborating with global life sciences company Bayer AG to investigate the development of an all-natural, microbe-based carbon-capture soil amendment for growers by identifying and developing microbes found in soil that can store carbon and nitrogen. Pluton’s proof-of-concept research predicts that the right grouping of microbes, applied in a spray at planting and harvest, can scrub nearly two tons of carbon from the air per acre of farmland per year, while replenishing nutrients in the soil.