Heritable Agriculture Inc., a leader in AI-driven crop improvement spun out of Google X , announced today that it has received a $4.98M grant from the Gates Foundation . The funding will support the development of the "Joint AI-driven Smallholder Omics aNalytics" (JASON) project, focused on leveraging artificial intelligence and multiple “omics” technologies to create climate-resilient crops for smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The project's purpose is to develop AI-based tools that identify gene targets and climate-adapted germplasm to improve crop resilience against challenging conditions such as drought and heat. This initiative is a critical step in advancing the foundation’s strategic goal of using digital innovation to reduce climate-related yield loss in smallholder agriculture. "This project will allow us to stand up a cloud-based AI genomics engine , dramatically accelerating the discovery and deployment of climate-resilient...