Can Rice Farming Go Climate-Friendly? This Startup Just Raised $31M to Prove It

Rize, an agritech startup working on sustainable rice cultivation, has closed a $31 million Series B round ($20M equity + $11M debt), taking its total funding to $47 million.

Investors:

🔹 BNP Paribas Asset Management Alts led the equity round, with The Rockefeller Foundation joining in

🔹 Existing backers Temasek and Breakthrough Energy Ventures also participated

🔹 Debt financing came from United Overseas Bank, Vietnam's BIDV, and Temasek Foundation

What Rize does:

🔹 Promotes Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) — an irrigation method that drains and reflloods fields instead of keeping them submerged, cutting methane emissions and water use

🔹 Claims up to 50% lower methane emissions, 20–30% less water use, and up to 30% higher farmer incomes

🔹 Works with ~17,000 smallholder farmers across 50,000+ hectares in Vietnam and Indonesia

The bigger picture: Rize's operations have grown 10x since its $14M Series A in 2024. It now plans to expand into new Southeast Asian markets, build AI tools for farmers, and scale to 300,000+ hectares and 150,000+ farmers by 2030.

🌱 A great example of climate-tech meeting agriculture at scale.