Chris Holly

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 Zymergen since its founding, helping the company to navigate IP diligence through various funding rounds and establish a robust IP estate. Zymergen, a synthetic biology and biofacturing company developing molecules used in industries including agriculture, chemicals, materials, pharmaceuticals, electronics and more, recently had a successful debut on the public markets with a NASDAQ listing in 2021.

Cooley’s IP team provides guidance on all aspects of IP matters, helping the company to protect its foundational high-throughput genomic engineering platform and various contributions to the field of synthetic biology.

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.

Cooley advised AppHarvest, a leading public agtech company and certified B Corp, on its acquisition of Root AI, an AI farming startup that creates intelligent robots to help manage high-tech indoor farms. In addition to advising on corporate matters, Cooley's IP team handled all patent due diligence aspects of the deal. Partner Josh Holleman led the Cooley team advising AppHarvest.

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Cooley advised emerging crop protection company Provivi on its $45.5 million series C-2 financing round led by Vivo Capital, with participation from returning shareholders. Provivi has developed a truly disruptive technological platform that enables the scalable production of environmentally friendly insect pheromone products. These products are able to naturally disrupt the mating cycle of insect pests and reduce the current overreliance upon non-sustainable synthetic insecticides. "The Series C-2 financing is a new milestone in the growth of our company. It builds upon a very successful year where Provivi achieved several product registrations worldwide and launched our first product commercially in Mexico," said Dr. Pedro Coelho, cofounder and CEO of Provivi.