By Bruce Leak, General Partner and Co-Founder, Playground Global
Imagine if the plants that sustain us—corn, rice, soy—were twice as efficient at turning sunlight into food. What would that world look like?
That’s not just a thought experiment, it’s the foundation of GigaCrop, a company that’s about to change everything we know about agriculture, energy, and carbon. GigaCrop’s breakthrough in carbon fixation has the potential to double crop yields without increasing land, water, or fertilizer use– a fundamental leap in agricultural efficiency.
Leading this effort is Chris Eiben, GigaCrop’s CEO and founder, who has spent years developing a radical new approach to photosynthesis—one that few scientists have even attempted. That potential is why Playground Global is investing $4.5 million in GigaCrop. We back founders taking on bold scientific risks with the power to reshape entire industries—and GigaCrop is doing exactly that.
For decades, agriculture has seen incremental improvements, but the core mechanics of how plants convert sunlight into growth have remained largely unchanged. Breeding, fertilizers, and precision farming have helped push yields higher, but they haven’t changed the biological limits of plant efficiency. Gigacrop is rewriting those limits.
Hacking Photosynthesis
Traditional approaches to improving photosynthesis—like photorespiration bypass and selective breeding—have hit diminishing returns. GigaCrop is taking a different approach, pioneering a new carbon fixation pathway that enables plants to convert sunlight into energy far more efficiently.
Plants are nature’s most underutilized machines. They capture sunlight, absorb CO₂, and turn it into biomass—the foundation of our food system. But they’re shockingly inefficient. Plants convert sunlight into energy with a total efficiency of around 2.5–3.5 per cent. The rest is wasted, limiting how much food we can grow and how much carbon crops can pull from the atmosphere.
GigaCrop is pushing beyond these traditional limits. Its breakthrough in enzyme engineering supercharges photosynthesis by rewiring the core metabolic process that plants use to grow. Instead of relying on Rubisco, the enzyme at the heart of carbon fixation, GigaCrop has developed new carbon-fixation enzymes that work faster and more efficiently.
While previous research suggested this kind of breakthrough would require editing 27 genes, GigaCrop’s approach does it with just four—a radically simpler and more scalable solution. If successful, this technology could not only redefine global agriculture but also significantly reduce the carbon footprint of food production.
The result is crops that grow faster, produce more food, and absorb more carbon—all without requiring more land, water, or fertilizer. This isn’t just an increase in productivity; it’s a fundamental expansion of what plants can do.
A Gigaton-Scale Opportunity
Agriculture isn’t just about food—it’s about carbon. Every year, human activity pumps tens of gigatons of CO₂ into the atmosphere, while crops already pull carbon from the air—but at a fraction of their potential.
Now, what happens when you double the amount that crops produce? We get more food, reducing pressure to clear forests for farmland. We unlock more plant-based materials creating viable alternatives to fossil fuels. And we double the amount of atmospheric CO₂ that crops absorb, turning agriculture into one of the most scalable carbon capture solutions on the planet. It’s direct air capture at planetary scale using the same croplands, forests, and fields we already use.
A Technology-Led Revolution in Farming
For thousands of years, agriculture has sustained civilization, yet it has lagged behind the technological revolutions reshaping industries. Gigacrop is changing that by applying cutting-edge biology to redefine farming at its core. And because Gigacrop’s technology works with existing farms, the impact will be immediate: no new land, no new supply chains—just dramatically higher yields from the same crops we already grow.
A Future of Abundance
For too long, sustainability has been about limits—cutting back, using less, shrinking our footprint. But the real opportunity isn’t in doing less; it’s in unlocking abundance. When plants are twice as efficient, we don’t just solve food security—we expand our possibilities. We create a scalable, sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, one already embedded in nature.
That’s the promise of GigaCrop: a world where plants work harder for us, so we can do more with less. It’s a bold, necessary vision—one we’re proud to support at Playground Global.
