Square Roots raises $5M+ seed round, looks to expand beyond Brooklyn

Bed-Stuy’s Square Roots just got a serious funding round and will look to expand its operations to cities across America.

The news comes from a Medium post by the Pfizer building food startup’s cofounder (and Elon Musk’s brother) Kimbal Musk.

“There is undoubtedly a lot of work ahead of us, and this funding will only help accelerate that,” Musk writes. “From hardware and software projects to help farmers grow more real food using fewer resources; to expanding our programming so we can support more entrepreneurs. We’re building for a future where every person on the planet has a direct relationship with their farmer — who is producing locally grown food that people can trust. Ultimately that means placing a Square Roots urban farming campus in every major city.”

Square Roots is an urban farming platform, with shipping containers flush with pink light where food grows year round and which use very little water. Participants who have farming ideas and business plans can use the shipping containers to get their ideas off the ground.

(For more context, we covered a tasting at the Square Roots campus this summer.)