AppHarvest, a Morehead, Ky.-based developer of large-scale tomato greenhouses, is going public via a reverse merger with a SPAC called Novus Capital (Nasdaq: NOVSU). The company would have an initial market value of around $1 billion.
Why it's a BFD: This is about to be a "unicorn" based in one of America's poorest congressional districts. AppHarvest CEO Jonathan Webb tells Axios that the company will employ around 350 people in Morehead by year-end, and that its location allows its product to reach 75% of the continental U.S. within a one-day drive.
- Details: The merger would include $375 million in new equity commitments from Fidelity, Inclusive Capital, and Novus Capital. AppHarvest previously raised around $160 million in VC funding firms firms like ValueAct Capital, Revolution Rise of the Rest, and Equilibrium Capital.
- AppHarvest directors include Martha Stewart, J.D. Vance, Jeff Ubben, and Impossible Foods CFO David Lee.
- The bottom line: “We looked at lots of ag startups, but a lot of time we found a desire to build tech for its own sake without a really good business model or understanding of how to bring the produce to market. But here they already had distribution agreements and were growing produce at scale with defensible margins.” — J.D. Vance, AppHarvest director and early investor, tells Axios