Tenacious Ventures

Tenacious Ventures is Australia's first and only specialist agrifood-tech venture capital firm, founded in 2018 and based in Melbourne. The firm provides early-stage capital to startups at the intersection of climate impact and digitally native agriculture, with a sector-specific, high-conviction, high-support model. It invests across the agrifood value chain at Seed and Series A, deploying roughly 80% of its capital into Australian-domiciled startups while seeking global potential, including in traditionally challenging areas such as hardware and biology, and it is willing to lead. First checks typically range from a couple hundred thousand dollars up to about $1M. Tenacious closed its first fund oversubscribed at AUD $35M and is raising Fund II with a $50M target, having reached a first close of $18M, maintaining its focus on early-stage Australian agri-food companies with positive climate impact. To date it has invested more than $23M into agtech startups that have attracted over $240M in follow-on capital. The portfolio of around 11 companies includes SwarmFarm Robotics, Nbryo, Agovor, Goterra, Regrow, Jupiter Ionics, Vow Food, RapidAIM, Cecil, Earthodic and Phyllome. The firm was founded by agrifood-tech experts Matthew Pryor, co-founder of Observant, and Sarah Nolet, founder of advisory firm AgThentic, and runs a team of about five people including three partners. Recent 2025 activity included a first-time investment in Nbryo and a follow-on in SwarmFarm Robotics' AUD $30M round. By pairing deep domain expertise with a climate-and-agriculture thesis, Tenacious backs the digitization of farming.