Cooperative Ventures

Cooperative Ventures Research

Investment Thesis

Cooperative Ventures is a corporate venture capital fund founded in late 2021 as a joint venture between CHS Inc. and GROWMARK, two of the largest farmer-owned agricultural supply cooperatives in North America. The fund invests in "breakthrough technologies" and emerging solutions that positively impact farming, with a mandate to create strategic fit with CHS's and GROWMARK's broader agricultural supply, distribution, and cooperative networks. Beyond capital, the fund is explicit that its core value proposition to portfolio companies is commercial access: CHS and GROWMARK together cover millions of acres and thousands of farmers across North America, giving portfolio companies an industry-leading test field and go-to-market channel for their products. The fund describes itself as operationally independent from its cooperative parents even though its capital and commercial value come directly from them.

Sector Focus ("Fields of Play")

The site organizes its focus areas into four "Fields of Play":

• Crop Production — crop nutrients, seed technology and genetics, crop protection, biologicals, and precision agriculture.
• Supply Chain — products and services that improve the efficiency of the link between retail/distribution and producers/farmers.
• Farm Business Enablement — software that helps farmers better operate their business (accounting, financial and operational management).
• Sustainability — systems and technologies that help farmers, ranchers, and cooperatives reduce and monitor their environmental impact.

Stage Focus

Cooperative Ventures describes itself as stage-agnostic, with an emphasis on early-stage companies that are ready to test or scale solutions in broad-acre row-crop agriculture. In practice its disclosed deals span first institutional/seed-style checks (Sabanto, 2022) through a lead position in a $10M Series A (Traction Ag, 2024) and participation in a larger syndicated Series A (Precision AI, 2025).

Check Size

No specific check-size range is publicly disclosed. The fund itself was launched with $50M in committed capital, split equally between CHS and GROWMARK. Deal sizes it has participated in range from an undisclosed early investment in Sabanto to leading a $10M Series A round in Traction Ag, to joining a larger multi-investor Series A in Precision AI alongside Farm Credit Canada, The 51 Food and AgTech Fund, Green Spark Ventures, Fulcrum Global Capital, BDC Capital, and At One Ventures.

Lead Tendency

Mixed. Cooperative Ventures has both led rounds (Traction Ag's $10M Series A, May 2024) and joined as one of several syndicate investors (Precision AI's Series A, May 2025, alongside six other investors). It classifies as "both" leads and follows depending on the deal.

Recent Activity

The fund has been active since its first disclosed investment in late 2022 and has continued deploying capital through 2026:

• November 2022: First disclosed investment — Sabanto, an autonomous tractor hardware/software company, to advance turn-key autonomy for farmers and ag retailers.
• May 2024: Led Traction Ag's $10M Series A (farm accounting software), joined by Plymouth Growth and existing investors.
• May 2025: Joined Precision AI's Series A (AI-based autonomous spray drones), alongside Farm Credit Canada, The 51 Food and AgTech Fund, Green Spark Ventures, Fulcrum Global Capital, BDC Capital, and At One Ventures.
• July/August 2026: Invested in OpenTug, an AI-native logistics platform for inland and coastal marine/barge voyage management, extending the fund's Supply Chain focus area into agricultural logistics.

Fund status appears to be actively deploying, with a multi-year cadence of roughly one new disclosed investment every 6-18 months plus ongoing portfolio support.

Portfolio Highlights

Six companies are listed on the firm's public portfolio page:

• Sabanto (sabantoag.com) — autonomous tractor hardware and software; first Cooperative Ventures investment (2022).
• Traction Ag (tractionag.com) — cloud-based farm accounting and financial management software; Cooperative Ventures led its $10M Series A (2024) and it recently acquired and integrated Granular and Conservis.
• Precision AI (precision.ai) — AI-based autonomous "sense and apply" spray drones for row-crop agriculture (2025 Series A).
• EarthOptics (earthoptics.com) — soil data measurement and mapping company building real-time soil data maps; also backed by Conti Ventures, FHB Ventures, VTC Ventures, and others.
• Constellr (constellr.com) — proprietary satellite constellation using thermal intelligence for defense, government, and agricultural analytics.
• OpenTug (opentug.com) — AI-native logistics technology for inland and coastal marine/barge voyage management (2026).

No exits or acquisitions among portfolio companies have been publicly disclosed to date.

Team

Cooperative Ventures' public team page splits into a "Fund Team" and an "Investment Committee," staffed jointly by CHS, GROWMARK, and outside venture manager Cerity Partners Ventures (formerly Touchdown Ventures, which was acquired by Cerity Partners in 2024):

• Heather Thompson — Director of Innovation, GROWMARK. Frequently quoted as the fund's public voice on portfolio investments (Precision AI, Traction Ag).
• Rob Uhlemann — Director, Enterprise Strategy, CHS.
• Brad Barie — Vice President, CHS.
• Karmy Kays — Executive Vice President & CFO, GROWMARK; oversees GROWMARK's finance and IT divisions.
• Beth Kearns — Partner, Cerity Partners Ventures; leads the firm's food & agriculture venture practice.
• Kevin Jones — Senior Principal, Cerity Partners Ventures, food & agriculture practice.
• Scott Lenet — Partner, Cerity Partners Ventures; formerly President of Touchdown Ventures, supervises industrial manufacturing and food & agriculture sector practices.

Decision Process

The fund maintains an explicit Investment Committee (distinct from the "Fund Team" that sources and manages deals), pointing to an investment-committee-style decision process typical of corporate venture vehicles jointly governed by two parent cooperatives.

Founder Preferences

Public commentary from the team (Heather Thompson, Ben Van Straten) emphasizes founders building solutions that create "mutually beneficial commercial relationships" with CHS's and GROWMARK's farmer-owner networks — i.e., technology that is ready to be piloted and scaled at the farmgate, not just point-solution software. The fund favors technical/operating teams (autonomy, AI/ML, remote sensing, logistics) whose products can plug into an existing distribution and retail network rather than build one from scratch.

Geographic Focus

The fund describes its investment mandate as global, but with a stated focus on companies that can have a near-term impact in CHS's and GROWMARK's North American markets. All disclosed portfolio companies to date are US-headquartered (Constellr is originally a German/European spinout but the site frames it around defense/government/agricultural analytics for the North American farmgate).

Operations

Cooperative Ventures operates out of two hometown offices — Bloomington, Illinois (GROWMARK headquarters) and St. Paul, Minnesota (near CHS headquarters) — with day-to-day fund management support from Cerity Partners Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm that also services CHS's and GROWMARK's CVC relationship (formerly branded Touchdown Ventures prior to its 2024 acquisition by Cerity Partners).