At a glance
Publicly launched: 2025
Headquarters: Berkeley, California
Technology: Nucleic acid–guided epigenetic modification to alter crop traits
Founder: Travis Bayer
Funding or notable partners: $12 million from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Future Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, and Syngenta
More than a decade ago, Travis Bayer cofounded Sound Agriculture, a company focused on using the natural interactions between plants and microbes to improve fertilizer efficiency.
The company launched its first product in 2019 and was raising millions of dollars from prominent investors. Then, sometime around 2020, an R&D team at Sound began developing a new technology.
