DTCF Leads €18 Million Series B Funding Round for STENON
Berlin — Farming smarter. Stenon announced an €18 million Series B funding round to drive the expansion of its proprietary “Soil Intelligence” technology. The round was led by Pymwymic, the European impact investor, together with the DeepTech & Climate Fund (DTCF). Atlantic.vc has been supporting the team since 2018 and is also participating in this round.
Following the funding round, Stenon aims to expand commercially in Brazil and throughout the South American market, in Central Asia, and in select European countries. The company plans to launch a fully machine-integrated, real-time nutrient analysis system later in 2026.
“Real-time soil data is the infrastructure of modern agriculture. Stenon has laid the groundwork for delivering it on a large scale. Today, farmers make fertilizer decisions worth millions of euros based on soil data that is already weeks old. Stenon closes this gap right in the field—backed by a sensor system that’s truly difficult to replicate and a scalable hardware-as-a-service (SaaS) model. “This is exactly the kind of deep-tech company DTCF invests in, and we look forward to supporting the team as it grows,” said Dr. Achim Plum, Managing Director at DTCF.
“What convinced me is that the Stenon team didn’t just develop a better measurement tool. Using AI-powered real-time analysis and a smart SaaS model, it has created a true platform business—one with the potential to bring about a lasting change in agricultural fertilization practices. This combination of technical depth and commercial clarity is rare,” explains Günther Bogenrieder, Investment Manager at DTCF.
Nitrogen Fertilizer: The Invention of the Century
In 1909, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed the Haber-Bosch process for producing nitrogen fertilizer in a laboratory in Karlsruhe. It is considered one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century, as it drastically increased crop yields and enabled the planet to cope with a population explosion from 1.6 billion people at that time to over 8 billion today. Modern agriculture—the global food system—relies on nitrogen fertilizer; half of the entire food production system depends on it today.
Nitrogen fertilizer has enabled humanity’s unprecedented growth, but in doing so has caused systematic environmental damage. Today, the process consumes 2% of the world’s total energy and accounts for 1.3% of global energy-related CO₂ emissions. The production of nitrogen fertilizer is heavily dependent on natural gas, which means that the global food supply is directly linked to one of the world’s most controversial, volatile, and geopolitically sensitive commodities. Since 40% of global nitrogen exports are controlled by just four countries (Russia, China, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia), the most vital part of our societies—food production—is exposed to extreme shocks. Just consider the Strait of Hormuz, the only maritime corridor through which approximately 30% of the global fertilizer trade passes—a corridor that can alter the economic viability of food production overnight.
Systemic Dependence on Nitrogen Fertilizer
And yet there is no way out. If synthetic nitrogen were phased out without a replacement, the global food system would collapse. Nitrogen fertilizer is one of the world’s most important raw materials, as crop yields and food prices depend directly on it.
The financial pressure is already acute: According to the European Commission, in April 2026, prices for nitrogen fertilizer across the European Union were 71% above their 2024 average. In the first quarter of 2025, more U.S. farmers filed for bankruptcy than in any full year since 2021. A survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation revealed that 70% of U.S. farmers could not afford the fertilizer they needed for the season.
More than half of the nitrogen applied is still lost due to suboptimal utilization. The goal is not necessarily to eliminate the need for nitrogen fertilizer entirely, but to minimize it. This can be achieved through the increasing professionalization of agriculture. For decades, to determine how much nitrogen a field actually contained, farmers had to take soil samples and wait weeks for the lab results. By the time the results were available, moisture and temperature had already altered the nitrogen profile, and the data was outdated. Farmers had no choice but to apply fertilizer based on general historical averages—the most expensive guess in modern agriculture, one that puts the entire economic viability of their operations at risk.
Increasing Yields and Reducing Risks in Agriculture
A century after Haber and Bosch brought their discovery from the laboratory to the market in Germany, Stenon did the same, focusing on the problem of the effective use of nitrogen fertilizer. Stenon began developing advanced sensor technologies and data-driven solutions for agriculture in 2018. Over the past ten years, the company has brought this technology to market. Farms that use Stenon reduce their nitrogen use by 20–40% while increasing their yields by 2–8%.
“While farmers have no control over the global supply of nitrogen or its prices, they can control how precisely each kilogram is applied. By combining real-time measurements of plant-available nitrogen with insights into soil organic carbon (SOC), we help our customers make better short-term fertilization decisions and develop a longer-term perspective on soil productivity,” Niels Grabbert, founder and CEO of Stenon.
About Stenon
Stenon was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Potsdam. The company develops real-time soil data infrastructures for the agricultural sector. Its FarmLab platform combines proprietary optical and electrical sensor technology, AI, and cloud software to measure key soil parameters directly in the field and translate them into agronomic decisions. The technology is already being used in South America, Central Asia, and Europe, helping farmers increase their crop yields and reduce their use of nitrogen fertilizer.
About DeepTech & Climate Fund
The DeepTech & Climate Fund (DTCF) invests up to €50 million in high-growth deep-tech and climate-tech companies in Germany and Europe. As an anchor investor and partner of long-term oriented European investors, the DTCF supports companies with long development cycles and high financing needs in implementing sustainable growth strategies and actively contributes to the expansion of the technology ecosystem. The fund acts as a bridge between investors, medium-sized companies, and innovative high-tech startups in the fields of climate, computing, industry, and life sciences. Financed by the German Future Fund and the ERP Special Fund, the DTCF plans to invest €1 billion in the coming years to strengthen the European technology ecosystem. — https://dtcf.de/
About Atlantic.vc
Atlantic.vc is a Berlin-based venture capital firm that invests in outstanding teams and technologies across Europe. Since its founding in 2016, Atlantic.vc has supported over 150 teams as the lead investor in their first funding rounds. — https://atlantic.vc/