Yara Growth Ventures takes a stake in Potsdam soil sensing company Stenon
Yara Growth Ventures has taken a minority stake in Potsdam soil sensing company Stenon in a second close of the Series B that raised 18m euros in July.
Yara Growth Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the Norwegian crop nutrition group Yara International ASA, has taken a minority stake in the German soil sensing company Stenon. Both sides confirmed the investment on 12 October 2026, Stenon in a statement from its Potsdam headquarters and Yara's role in an AgFunderNews report the same day. The money arrives as a second close of Stenon's Series B. Financial terms of the Yara investment were not disclosed.
The first close of that round was announced on 1 July 2026 at 18 million euros, equivalent to 20.5 million dollars, led by the Dutch impact investor Pymwymic. The German DeepTech & Climate Fonds joined as a new investor alongside the existing backers Atlantic, Oyster Bay, Founders Fund and TIME Ventures, the investment firm of Marc Benioff, together with Bernd Hoffmann, formerly a vice president at AGCO and Claas KGaA. Stenon was founded in Potsdam in 2018 by Niels Grabbert, who is chief executive, with Jens Meichsner as chief technology officer.
The product is FarmLab, a portable device that measures plant available nitrogen, known as Nmin, directly in the field, along with soil organic carbon, temperature and moisture. Optical and electrical sensors feed agronomic models and cloud software that turn the readings into fertiliser recommendations for growers and agronomists, and the platform carries DLG and TÜV certifications. Grabbert says it is now used across several million acres, with deployments in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Greece, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in Brazil and in California. The customers are input retailers, machinery dealers, agricultural consultants and food producers. In its July announcement the company put nitrogen fertiliser savings at 20 to 40 per cent in multi-year, multi-country use cases, with yield increases of 2 to 8 per cent across crops including corn, beans, cotton, sugarcane, coffee, grains and vegetables.
The timing has much to do with the fertiliser market. As reported by AgFunderNews, the World Bank said in June that disruption around the Strait of Hormuz had pushed urea and phosphate prices to their highest level since 2022, warned that they could climb well beyond current forecasts, and noted that farmers facing those costs tend to apply less, which weighs on yields. Yara makes the inputs Stenon's software is built to ration. Grabbert told AgFunderNews that this makes the two a good strategic match, and that a producer with more than a century in crop nutrition choosing to invest amounts to validation of the measurement itself. His stated aim is to turn soil data from an occasional measurement into “an operational layer of agricultural decision-making.” Over the coming 12 months Stenon plans to launch new technology in 2027, grow deployments in Latin America and enter further markets.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: three things in this deal are worth copying. First, the second close as an instrument. Stenon closed 18 million euros in July with a financial lead and then left the round open for a strategic investor, which keeps price and terms set by the financial side while still bringing the corporate in. Founders who take the corporate money first usually find the reverse, that the strategic sets the valuation and the information rights. Second, the counterintuitive investor. Yara sells nitrogen and Stenon's pitch is applying less of it, which only looks like a contradiction if you believe the fertiliser business is about tonnage. For a crop nutrition group facing a price spike and the prospect of growers cutting rates, a tool that shows which kilogram actually pays is what defends the premium product against the cheap commodity tonne. If what you are building reduces an incumbent's unit sales, find that version of the argument before you pitch it. Third, the channel. Stenon does not sell farm by farm, it sells through input retailers, machinery dealers, agronomy consultants and food producers, which is how a hardware product reaches several million acres with a team this size. One caution on the numbers: savings of 20 to 40 per cent and yield gains of 2 to 8 per cent are company figures from customer use cases, not independent trial data, and any buyer with an agronomy department will ask for the trial design. The DLG and TÜV certifications are the right instinct, because in European ag sensing third party certification is the closest thing to a moat, being what allows a retailer to put your recommendation in front of its own customers and carry the liability for it. Terms were not disclosed, so read nothing into the size of the Yara cheque. Read the signal instead: the incumbent whose product you optimise is often the most motivated buyer of your data, and reaching it as a late strategic investor in an already priced round is cheaper than reaching it as a lead.
Yara Growth Ventures takes a stake in Potsdam soil sensing company Stenon
The venture arm of the Norwegian crop nutrition group has invested in a second close of Stenon's Series B, four months after an 18 million euro first close. Terms were not disclosed.
Yara Growth Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of the Norwegian crop nutrition group Yara International ASA, has taken a minority stake in the German soil sensing company Stenon. Both sides confirmed the investment on 12 October 2026, Stenon in a statement from its Potsdam headquarters and Yara's role in an AgFunderNews report the same day. The money arrives as a second close of Stenon's Series B. Financial terms of the Yara investment were not disclosed.
The first close of that round was announced on 1 July 2026 at 18 million euros, equivalent to 20.5 million dollars, led by the Dutch impact investor Pymwymic. The German DeepTech & Climate Fonds joined as a new investor alongside the existing backers Atlantic, Oyster Bay, Founders Fund and TIME Ventures, the investment firm of Marc Benioff, together with Bernd Hoffmann, formerly a vice president at AGCO and Claas KGaA. Stenon was founded in Potsdam in 2018 by Niels Grabbert, who is chief executive, with Jens Meichsner as chief technology officer.
The product is FarmLab, a portable device that measures plant available nitrogen, known as Nmin, directly in the field, along with soil organic carbon, temperature and moisture. Optical and electrical sensors feed agronomic models and cloud software that turn the readings into fertiliser recommendations for growers and agronomists, and the platform carries DLG and TÜV certifications. Grabbert says it is now used across several million acres, with deployments in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Greece, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in Brazil and in California. The customers are input retailers, machinery dealers, agricultural consultants and food producers. In its July announcement the company put nitrogen fertiliser savings at 20 to 40 per cent in multi-year, multi-country use cases, with yield increases of 2 to 8 per cent across crops including corn, beans, cotton, sugarcane, coffee, grains and vegetables.
The timing has much to do with the fertiliser market. As reported by AgFunderNews, the World Bank said in June that disruption around the Strait of Hormuz had pushed urea and phosphate prices to their highest level since 2022, warned that they could climb well beyond current forecasts, and noted that farmers facing those costs tend to apply less, which weighs on yields. Yara makes the inputs Stenon's software is built to ration. Grabbert told AgFunderNews that this makes the two a good strategic match, and that a producer with more than a century in crop nutrition choosing to invest amounts to validation of the measurement itself. His stated aim is to turn soil data from an occasional measurement into “an operational layer of agricultural decision-making.” Over the coming 12 months Stenon plans to launch new technology in 2027, grow deployments in Latin America and enter further markets.
Why it matters for AgTech founders: three things in this deal are worth copying. First, the second close as an instrument. Stenon closed 18 million euros in July with a financial lead and then left the round open for a strategic investor, which keeps price and terms set by the financial side while still bringing the corporate in. Founders who take the corporate money first usually find the reverse, that the strategic sets the valuation and the information rights. Second, the counterintuitive investor. Yara sells nitrogen and Stenon's pitch is applying less of it, which only looks like a contradiction if you believe the fertiliser business is about tonnage. For a crop nutrition group facing a price spike and the prospect of growers cutting rates, a tool that shows which kilogram actually pays is what defends the premium product against the cheap commodity tonne. If what you are building reduces an incumbent's unit sales, find that version of the argument before you pitch it. Third, the channel. Stenon does not sell farm by farm, it sells through input retailers, machinery dealers, agronomy consultants and food producers, which is how a hardware product reaches several million acres with a team this size. One caution on the numbers: savings of 20 to 40 per cent and yield gains of 2 to 8 per cent are company figures from customer use cases, not independent trial data, and any buyer with an agronomy department will ask for the trial design. The DLG and TÜV certifications are the right instinct, because in European ag sensing third party certification is the closest thing to a moat, being what allows a retailer to put your recommendation in front of its own customers and carry the liability for it. Terms were not disclosed, so read nothing into the size of the Yara cheque. Read the signal instead: the incumbent whose product you optimise is often the most motivated buyer of your data, and reaching it as a late strategic investor in an already priced round is cheaper than reaching it as a lead.
