Terrana Biosciences, a Cambridge, MA-based company developing RNA-based agricultural solutions, raised $50 million in a Series A round sourced entirely from Flagship Pioneering, the biotech venture firm also known for founding Moderna. This is confirmed by funding tracker Fundz and AgFunderNews, both of which identify Flagship Pioneering as the sole funding source.
The rumor connecting Bill Gates to this investment appears to have originated from unsourced social media posts, including a YouTube video with no credible sourcing. Snopes investigated the claim directly and found no evidence of a Gates connection. A Flagship Pioneering spokesperson explicitly denied that Gates or the Gates Foundation had any involvement with Terrana's funding.
The confusion may have been amplified by the fact that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation did award two grants in 2024 to other Flagship Pioneering portfolio companies for unrelated research — but those grants had nothing to do with Terrana Biosciences or RNA crop technology. A search of the Gates Foundation's own committed-grants database returns no results for Terrana.