Just when you thought Silicon Valley couldn’t get more dramatic, another tech darling bites the dust. Plenty, the vertical farming company that promised to revolutionize agriculture, has officially filed for bankruptcy – proving once again that even with nearly $1 billion in funding, tech dreams can quickly turn into compost.

The Rise and Fall of Agricultural Tech

South San Francisco-based Plenty seemed like the poster child for innovative agtech. Backed by heavy hitters like Walmart, Jeff Bezos, and SoftBank, they were going to save the world one indoor strawberry at a time. Their last valuation hit a cool $1.9 billion in 2022, which now feels like a fever dream of tech optimism.

A Trend of Farming Failures

Plenty isn’t alone in this startup graveyard. Other vertical farming unicorns like Bowery Farming and AppHarvest have also crashed and burned, burning through hundreds of millions in investor cash. It’s like a Silicon Valley version of “Farmville” – looks great on paper, totally unsustainable in reality.

The Venture Capital Rollercoaster

With $20.7 million in debtor-in-possession financing, Plenty is attempting to salvage its strawberry farm in Virginia and keep its research center alive. But let’s be real: this looks less like a comeback and more like a final, desperate gasp in the tech ecosystem’s relentless startup hunger games.