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Scaling impact across crops and borders Phytoform’ s ambitions extend far beyond potatoes and tomatoes. Its platform is designed to work across multiple species and varieties, enabling rapid deployment of new traits industry-wide.
“ We want to become a layer in the genetics improvement process, allowing companies to introduce traits much faster than with conventional methods,” Will explains. The company is actively seeking partnerships to expand into row crops and alternative plant proteins, aiming to boost sustainability across the agricultural spectrum.
However, regulatory hurdles remain, especially in Europe where genomeedited crops face strict controls. This has led Phytoform to initially focus on markets like the US, South America and Japan, where regulations are more favorable for genome-edited plants that do not contain foreign DNA.
How AWS’ s Compute for Climate Fellowship is accelerating innovation Central to Phytoform’ s breakthroughs is the company’ s involvement with AWS’ s Compute for Climate Fellowship.
“ Phytoform’ s CRE. AI. TIVE AI platform selects or invents new genetic traits to make crops more climate resilient,” says Lisbeth Kaufman, Head of Climate Tech Startups at AWS.
“ We’ ve helped them build and scale this model in the cloud, making it more robust and able to handle larger datasets and more plant types.
“ We were really impressed by their innovative use of AI and the real-world impact of their work-reducing waste, improving yields and enhancing food security.”
The fellowship not only provides critical cloud computing resources but also technical expertise and business development opportunities.
148 June 2025