- Moa Technology has completed a £22.2 million Series C round, co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Supernova Invest.
- Over the last two years, Moa Technology has signed R&D agreements with four major agrochemical companies, including Corteva Agriscience.
- Dr Virginia Corless, the CEO, previously worked in astrophysics and on energy policy for the US Senate.
Before addressing crop-killing weeds, Dr Virginia Corless studied astrophysics. Her career included clean energy policy for the US Senate and work on a food-energy-water project in the Sahara desert. This led to her current role as chief executive officer of Moa Technology.
The company just raised £22.2 million to strengthen its position in the often-overlooked market of weed resistance. The Series C round was co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Supernova Invest.
New investors included Agri Investment Fund, GrainInnovate for Australia’s Grain Research Development Corporation, Infinity Investment Partners, and Magdalen College Oxford. Existing investors Lansdowne Partners, Parkwalk, and Oxford University Innovation also joined in.
Moa Technology was founded in 2017 by Professor Liam Dolan and Dr Clément Champion as a spin-out from Oxford University’s Plant Sciences Department. Corless became CEO in 2021, bringing experience from astrophysics, clean energy policy, the Sahara Forest Project, and Novihum Technologies, a German agricultural technology company.
Moa is based in Oxford, runs a glasshouse research facility in North Yorkshire, and has tested over 900,000 compounds since it started.
Why weed resistance is a bigger issue than it seems
Herbicide resistance is becoming a bigger problem as weeds adapt to current chemicals faster than new solutions can be created. Moa’s technology has found over 80 new ways to fight weeds, with several now in their third year of international field trials.
In 2025, the company launched Moa Amplifiers, which are not herbicides themselves but help reduce the amount of traditional herbicide needed. Farmers can use Amplifiers with their current products to use fewer chemicals while still controlling resistant weeds.
Moa does not compete directly with big agrochemical companies like Bayer, Corteva, or Syngenta. Instead, it licenses its discoveries to these firms, using a model more like pharmaceutical platforms than typical agricultural technology startups.
This matters because most crop protection research is done in-house by large companies. Moa acts as an external discovery partner and has formed commercial partnerships with Nufarm, Gowan, Certis Belchim, and Corteva Agriscience in the last two years.
In European agricultural technology, Tech Funding News has reported that many startups are working to reduce, not replace, chemical use. For example, Alvie, a startup from Paris, raised money to cut pesticide use by improving how they are applied. Trapview created an AI system to monitor pests and reduce spraying. Moa stands out by focusing on finding completely new ways to fight weeds.
What this funding round shows about investor interest
The funds will help bring the three most advanced programs to market, grow the early-stage pipeline, and further develop the Amplifiers line, with extra support from milestone payments by industry partners.
“When we helped spin Moa out from the University of Oxford’s Plant Sciences Department in 2017, we saw that its technology platform had a unique and important approach to address the market’s need for herbicides capable of breaking weed resistance,” says Martin Fiennes of Oxford Science Enterprises.
“Weed resistance continues to spread. It is causing increasing yield losses, further undermining the resilience of farming operations, while climate change is expected to make weed control even more challenging,” adds Alexandre Biau of Supernova Invest.
“This marks a major milestone for Moa Technology — a validation of the outstanding progress we have made not just in the laboratory, but also in striking commercial deals with leading industry partners around the world. We are particularly pleased that, through AIF in Europe and GrainInnovate in Australia, the farming sector itself is closely connected to the next phase of Moa’s development,” Corless concludes.
The global herbicide market was valued at $47.31 billion in 2026 and is expected to reach $60.09 billion by 2031, growing at a 4.9% annual rate due to rising food demand and less available farmland. Moa is one of several European startups, including some on TFN’s recent watchlist, that could benefit from this growth without directly selling herbicides.
It is still unclear whether Moa’s licensing model will become a sustainable, independent business or mainly act as a long-term R&D provider for large industry players. This funding round has not answered that question yet.
