What if plants could talk to farmers and tell them when they’re in distress? That would not only save the plants, but it could reduce the amount of agricultural waste that threatens the planet’s health.

Much of agriculture may look green, but the industry is one of the world’s biggest carbon offenders. It accounts for at least 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Agricultural waste adds to the problem.

Even with the use of pesticides, 40% of most food crops globally are lost to disease and pests. Now companies like SatAgro, Climate FieldView and a California-based startup called InnerPlant are working to reduce agricultural waste. InnerPlant helps crops communicate with their farmers by using genetic engineering.

InnerPlant’s technology uses fluorescents in the plants, so the leaves emit a signal when they are in distress. That signal is detectable from devices that can be attached to satellites, drones or tractors.

“As the plant is reacting to the stresses in your environment, like fungal pressure insects or nitrogen deficiency, it will start to signal and then we can help farmers understand what areas of the field need something and what areas are fine and don’t need additional chemicals,” said Shely Aronov, CEO of InnerPlant.

Farmers then know what to treat and don’t waste money on chemicals, which are up to 30% over-applied.

“We want to eliminate all the unnecessary applications of chemicals into our food system, into our soils and also the additional cost that comes to farmers that they don’t get any benefit from,” added Aronov.

This plant-by-plant technology is highly scalable and could be licensed to major seed companies. InnerPlant would earn royalty revenue, which makes it enticing to investors.

“If you can get this technology into every single corn seed or soybean seed across North America and South America, that is many hundred millions of acres, and you can think about a few dollars per acre from a revenue perspective. That all of a sudden ends up in a lot of revenue for this business,” said Tom Biegala, founding partner of Bison Ventures, an InnerPlant investor.

In addition to Bison Ventures, InnerPlant is backed by John Deere, MS&AD Ventures, UpWest VC and Bee Partners. It has $22.3 million in total funding.

InnerPlant is now working closely with small farmers and some of the nation’s largest agriculture producers. Some have paid to get early access to the technology, which will start with soybeans and then expand to other crops.

Data management software maker Rubrik jumped in its New York Stock Exchange debut on Thursday, the latest sign that public market investors are showing an appetite for tech IPOs.The stock opened at $38.60 per share, after the Microsoft-backed company priced its IPO at $32 a share on Wednesday, above its expected range of $28 to 31 per share.

In selling 23.5 million shares, it raised $752 million, leaving it with a valuation of $5.6 billion. Rubrik shares are trading under the ticker “RBRK.”

Many technology companies appeared on public markets in the 2010s as central banks kept interest rates low. Worries about a weakening economy starting in late 2021 led investors to become less interested in unprofitable companies. Since then, few young technology companies have been willing to try going public. But that could be changing. Reddit and Astera Labs, which sells data center connectivity chips, went public in March.

Rubrik, founded a decade ago, reported a $354 million net loss in the latest fiscal year, compared to a $278 million loss in the year prior. The company now generates 91% of its revenue from subscriptions, up from 59% two years ago. 

Microsoft invested in the company in 2021. Rubrik’s co-founder and CEO, Bipul Sinha, has 8% control. Lightspeed Venture Partners, where Sinha used to be a startup investor, has 25% of the voting power.

Sinha said Rubrik isn’t able to control market conditions but was able to prepare itself to go public.

“When we see the market is receptive and we were ready, we go,” he said in an interview.

A company will decide on the timing for its IPO six to eight weeks ahead, relying partly on input from bankers, said Ravi Mhatre, managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, which was the sole investor in Rubrik’s first round of venture capital.

Input from investors was also critical.

“Bipul spent a lot of time with public market investors both in 2023 and then in 2024,” said Mhatre, whose firm invested some $362 million in Rubrik.

From those conversations, Sinha has gotten a sense of what investors would be interested in.

“Folks are looking for strong companies to go public, companies that have the potential to be a durable business, a moat in the marketplace, has something to unique to offer in the marketplace and clearly winning in the marketplace,” Sinha said. “Staying public is the key, not going public.”

This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

Rising interest rates crushed technology valuations and had a chilling effect on Silicon Valley. Stripe’s co-founder says it was needed.

“Broadly speaking, the effects of higher rates have been quite good,” John Collison, president of the online payments company, told CNBC in an interview at the company’s annual conference Wednesday. “The period where money was free was not a healthy time in Silicon Valley.”

Collison founded Stripe with his brother Patrick in 2010. The company took off, becoming a startup darling and racing to a valuation of $95 billion in 2021, making it one of the world’s most valuable venture-backed businesses, behind Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Stripe had to take a major haircut along with the rest of the industry as soaring inflation and rising interest rates, starting in 2022, pushed investors out of the riskiest assets, lifted borrowing costs and forced startups to tighten their belts.

Stripe slashed its valuation to $50 billion in a 2023 financing round. Its recent employee tender offer valued the company at closer to $65 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Valuations are a product of interest rates,” Collison said. Still, he said, “Stripe’s business is the healthiest it’s ever been.” Regarding the drop in valuation, he added, “We’re not losing sleep over it.”

Stripe processed $1 trillion last year, up 25% from 2023, the company said in its annual letter.

While many tech companies took a hit in 2022 and 2023, Collison said the rising interest rate environment succeeded in flushing out the “wackiest” startup ideas, leaving the best ones to get funded.

He pointed to an “overfunding” of marginally good ideas, and “zombie companies” taking too long to go bust.

“That’s not good for dynamic capital allocation in the broader economy,” Collison said. “You want people to be working on the most valuable ideas, and not on the marginal ideas.

Following an extended stretch of rock-bottom borrowing costs, the Federal Reserve started lifting rates in 2022, and hiked its benchmark rate last year to the highest since 2001. Rates have held steady since, and recent statements by Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers have cemented the notion that cuts aren’t coming in the next several months. 

Collison said there’s more pain coming.

The “point of high rates is that they should hurt, and they haven’t hurt enough yet,” he said. “We should just assume that the hurt takes a bit longer to arrive.”

One part of the tech market that’s powering through the higher rate environment is artificial intelligence, where there “seems to be a new AI funding round every week,” Collison said.

This week, Perplexity announced a $63 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. SoftBank and Jeff Bezos are among its backers.

Stripe is benefiting in its own way from the euphoria. OpenAI, Anthropic and Hugging Face are among the AI startups using the company’s payment processing technology.

“I can’t remember a time in Silicon Valley where it has felt like there was as much interest in tech advances taking place,” Collison said of the AI boom. “It’s just a fun time to be in tech, broadly.”

As for Stripe’s future, an eventual IPO has been a source of speculation for years given the company’s lofty valuation and its roster of high-profile backers thirsting for a return on their investment. Collison said Stripe is in “no rush,” and that executives are focused on providing liquidity to employees through secondary share sales.

“We have no timeline that we’re announcing on being a public company,” he said. “The thing that we were quite focused on is making sure that there is good liquidity for employees.”

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