Nebraska's DARO raises $2.5M to scale swine disease testing
What's the deal? DARODealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Nebraska-based agtech startup focused on swine illness detection, has closed a $2.5 million early-stage round led by Grit Road PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Invest NebraskaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and NelnetDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. All three lead investors are based in Nebraska.
What's the endgame? DARO will expand capacity for its patent-pending disease testing and diagnostic technology. The money follows a $1.1 million seed raise from early 2025.
Why now? The swine industry has been squeezed by disease as it has grown. One pathogen alone — porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) — costs producers an estimated $1.2 billion per year, an 80% jump from the mid-2000s. PRRSV is DARO's primary focus, though it also tests for diseases such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.
What's the context? Nebraska had about 3.5 million pigs as of March 2025, and swine ranks as the state's third-largest agriculture market by sales. Nebraska contributed about $2 billion of the United States' $36.4 billion in hog sales in 2022, fifth in the nation.
DARO was incubated at The CombineDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a joint venture between Invest Nebraska, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and its Nebraska Innovation Campus.
What they're saying: "This investment allows us to scale the laboratory, data and commercial systems behind DARO so more producers can use routine, whole-herd surveillance to gain time when disease emerges," said founder and chief executive officer Kristen Bernhard.
Co-founder and chief operating officer Josh DeMers pointed to rising uptake. "What has changed for DARO over the last year is the level of adoption we are seeing across the swine industry," he said. "Our focus now is execution: increasing capacity, expanding the pathogens we can detect and making DARO easier to deploy across large production systems."
The signal: At $2.5 million, DARO's round sits in the lower tier for venture deals by size — a modest raise reflecting both its early stage and the specialised, regional nature of agtech. For lead investor Mike Jung of Grit Road Partners, the bet is on a shift in how producers manage disease, "turning surveillance from a reactive test into a proactive, whole-herd intelligence tool."
Read more: siliconprairienews.com
Image credit: The Pug Father
