Did the EIC Accelerator Pay Off for Biome Makers' Soil DNA Tests?

Biome Makers sells BeCrop, a soil test that sequences the DNA of the bacteria and fungi in a field sample and turns it into a report on soil health, disease risk and nutrient cycling. Its Spanish subsidiary, Biome Makers Spain SL of Valladolid, was selected in the EIC Accelerator pilot's 9 October 2019 cut-off for a grant-only award, according to the European Commission's list of selected companies, which names no other beneficiary for the project. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €1,709,908.38 towards a total cost of €2,442,726.25, for a project that ran from 1 March 2020 to 31 December 2021, according to the BeCrop fact sheet.

Five years after the project closed, BeCrop is a commercial product. The company's 2025 impact report, published on 8 July 2026, says 50,000 farmers adopted sustainable practices with its insights and that it works with 11 partner labs across 16 countries. Those figures are the company's own; no independent audit of them is public.

Where Biome Makers Stands Now

Biome Makers is operating. Its parent company, founded in California in 2015, gives Davis, California, as its headquarters in the July 2026 impact report; earlier coverage placed it in West Sacramento, according to Agri-Pulse in 2021. In March 2026 the company said BeCrop had been named the global winner of the AI for ALL Impact Challenge at the India AI Impact Summit, with India and Latin America as growth priorities, according to its announcement. A year earlier it appeared on TIME and Statista's lists of the World's and America's Top GreenTech Companies 2025, as both the company and Global Agriculture reported.

The Spanish beneficiary is listed as active in the Valladolid commercial register. Its share capital is €100,000 after a 2018 increase, its sole shareholder is Biome Makers Inc., and the two co-founders are joint directors, according to the BORME entries collected by Empresia and North Data. It moved within Valladolid to Calle Estadio 9 in March 2020, the month the EU project started. No insolvency or name change appears in either record.

The Technology: Reading Soil Through Its Microbes

A BeCrop customer sends a soil sample to a lab, where the DNA of the microbial community is sequenced; Biome Makers' software compares the profile with its database and returns a report on biodiversity, nutrient pathways, disease vulnerabilities and recommendations, as AgFunderNews described it in 2021. The CORDIS objective says the aim was to identify "the known +67K microbial species but also the unknown" from one soil sample per hectare, and that BeCrop was "the direct evolution" of WineSeq, the company's earlier sequencing tool for vineyards, according to the fact sheet.

The difference from a standard soil test is the biological layer. The company's own April 2026 presentation at the Technical University of Madrid's Ceigram centre cites the FAO's view that soil health depends on chemical, physical and biological factors with equal importance, and presents microbes as bioindicators. The business model is a licence: partner labs run the wet-lab analysis and Biome Makers delivers the results, according to the BeCrop final report.

The predictive claims have some peer-reviewed support. A 2021 study in mSphere, written by Biome Makers and Bayer scientists and funded by Bayer CropScience, analysed 185 potato field samples from three US regions and found that fungal network properties could estimate whether a sample came from a low or high yield block; the preprint was posted in February 2021. The study was not independent of the company, and no peer-reviewed validation of BeCrop's disease forecasts by an outside group was found.

What the EIC Project Promised and What CORDIS Shows

The BeCrop grant was Biome Makers Spain's second EU award. In 2018 it received €50,000 from the SME Instrument Phase 1 for MicCropHealth, a four-month feasibility study from 1 December 2018 to 31 March 2019 for the same soil microbiome platform, according to CORDIS. The October 2019 award funded the scale-up. The grant agreement was signed on 14 February 2020.

The final periodic report, covering December 2020 to December 2021, calls the project "successful in both, scientific and commercial levels". It lists 22,295 soil samples from 105 crops in 44 countries, 183 agreements signed under the company's Fields4Ever initiative, membership of the FAO's Global Soil Laboratory Network, three scientific publications, a new patent family, commercial alliances with Bayer, Disagro, Agroestrategias and others, and "a base of over 2.000 clients". At application, the company had a database of more than 5,000 samples from 20 countries. The project closed on its CORDIS end date of 31 December 2021; whether that date was ever extended is not shown.

1. BeCrop on the marketDeliveredSold as BeCrop Test, Trials, Rate and Farm, per the company site and CORDIS report.
2. Platform for any soil and any cropDelivered105 crops in 44 countries by December 2021; 188+ crops by October 2023, per Fruitnet.
3. Early detection of biological threatsDeliveredDisease risk metrics are part of the product; no independent validation found.
4. Practical input recommendationsDeliveredBeCrop Farm with AI-generated recommendations launched in 2024, per the company timeline.
5. Partner lab licensingDeliveredWaters Agricultural Laboratories licence in April 2021, per the company timeline; labs in Australia and Brazil added in 2023, per Fruitnet.

The Money Since the Award

Biome Makers closed a $4 million Series A in August 2019, two months before the EIC cut-off, co-led by Seaya Ventures and JME Ventures with LocalGlobe, after an earlier $2 million round with investors including Illumina, according to Invest in Spain and the company's timeline. In August 2021, during the last months of the EU project, it raised a $15 million Series B led by Prosus Ventures, with Seaya, Viking Global Investors, JME Ventures and Pymwymic, as AgFunderNews and Agri-Pulse reported. The CORDIS report credits the BeCrop project's effect on the company's reputation for that round. No later round has been announced.

The company has also stayed in EU research. Since May 2023 Biome Makers Spain has been a partner in CONSERWA, a Horizon Europe project on agroecological weed management coordinated by the Cyprus Research and Innovation Center, with a net EU contribution of €246,187.50 for the company and an end date of 30 April 2027, according to CORDIS. The company does not appear among the organisations on the EIC Fund's list of invested companies (all 16 pages checked); its award was grant only.

What the Filings Show, and What They Do Not

Biome Makers Spain has filed annual accounts in Valladolid through financial year 2024, according to Empresia, but the figures themselves are sold as paid reports and could not be checked for this article. The free summaries disagree slightly: Empresia puts the unit at 48 employees and annual sales between €1 million and €2.5 million, while Infoempresa gives 10 to 49 employees and sales below €2 million. Neither states the year of the figure. The Californian parent, which holds the revenue from US customers, does not publish accounts.

Why It Matters for Europe

The European Commission says 60 to 70% of soils in the EU are in an unhealthy state, and loss of soil biodiversity is one of the threats covered by the Soil Monitoring Law, which entered into force on 16 December 2025 and must be transposed by 16 December 2028, according to the Commission's soil monitoring page. The EU's Mission Soil platform notes that biological indicators such as microbial diversity are where "many current monitoring systems have major gaps", and that the directive does not yet require them, according to its note on the law's publication. That gap is the market Biome Makers is selling into. Part of its lab and data work sits in Valladolid, but the Spanish beneficiary is wholly owned by the Californian parent, and its Series B investors include the US-based Viking Global Investors alongside Spanish and Dutch funds, according to AgFunderNews.

The Verdict

Biome Makers and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records and published statements, linked throughout.