Dr. Chris Holly

Cooley advised Sentera, a leading provider of remote imagery solutions for agriculture, on its acquisition by John Deere. Sentera’s industry-leading cameras are compatible with most major drone platforms, enabling farmers and crop scouts to quickly and efficiently capture high-resolution data at scale. The cameras’ capabilities and Sentera’s FieldAgent software tools help farmers and agronomists assess plant-level health, identify stressors and take action.

This acquisition will advance the capabilities of John Deere’s existing tech offerings, providing farmers and ag service providers with a more comprehensive set of tools to generate and use data to make decisions that improve farm profitability, efficiency and sustainability.

Cooley advised Jord BioScience on its $7 million Series B financing round, including the intellectual property due diligence in connection with the deal. The funding round will accelerate Jord BioScience’s development and commercialization of its microbial technologies to deliver next-generation crop inputs.

Cooley advised Graphyte on its $30 million Series A financing round, including intellectual property due diligence in connection with the deal. The Series A proceeds will enable Graphyte to launch an additional four carbon removal facilities over the course of 2025 and 2026, on its path towards removing more than 5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030.

Cooley advised AgroSpheres on its $22 million Series B financing and led intellectual property due diligence in connection with the round. Cooley counsels AgroSpheres with respect to corporate matters and is the architect behind development of the company’s ever-expanding patent portfolio.

AgroSpheres’ biomanufacturing platform enables cost-effective manufacturing and successful field application of novel biological modalities. The unprecedented field success of foliar-applied AgriCell-RNAi technologies has garnered significant industry interest.

“In this unprecedented bear market, food security, environmental footprint, and supply chain resilience are of paramount importance,” said Payam Pourtaheri, founder and CEO of AgroSpheres. “We are thankful for the support from our partners at Lewis & Clark, OAS, Bidra, and Cavallo, as we take significant strides towards our vision of a future built by nature’s technologies and bring our biobased technologies to partners globally.”

Cooley has served as primary IP counsel to Nobell Foods since its founding, helping the company to protect its innovative contributions aimed at making the world’s food systems more humane and sustainable. Nobell Foods is utilizing the power of plants to reimagine the world’s food supply and produce delicious cheese from plant-derived dairy proteins. The company recently completed a $75 million Series B in 2021 to help bring its vision to the world.