
- Founded
- 2023
- Employees*
- 8
- Funding to Date*
- $500,000
- Website
- semionbio.com/
The world’s $6.2 trillion in crop production depends on domesticated plants that have been optimized for yield, not resilience. Their defensive mechanisms against pests have been silenced, and in their stead, chemical pesticides have protected crops, ending hunger in much of the world. In a changing climate, however, pests are spreading and evolving quicker than pesticide makers can adapt, putting global food supplies in jeopardy.
Semion turns the table on pests with sprayable biological products that activate dormant defense mechanisms in crops. Its first solution targets the corn leafhopper, a major corn pest devastating crops in the Americas.
In field trials, Semion’s solution effectively controlled the pest and its associated diseases, resulting in an average yield increase of 30% compared to untreated crops—at one-third the cost that farmers would have otherwise spent on ineffective pesticides. Pests are unlikely to evolve resistance to Semion’s treatment because it activates plants’ diverse natural defense mechanisms, including dynamic and indirect defenses like attracting natural enemies, which are challenging for pests to overcome.
Semion’s CEO, Emilio Molina, grew up in a farming family and saw firsthand how increasing reliance on pesticides made their livelihood unsustainable. At age 22, Molina received a $100,000 grant from Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian to drop out of college and do something about it. He co-founded Semion with chemical ecologist Victoria Coll Aráoz, PhD, agricultural engineer Alejandro Forlin, and entomologist Jorge Hill, PhD. Their mission is to create novel pest control technologies to help farmers thrive and secure the global food supply.