Agbiotech newcomer Inari has raised $89 million to pursue an ambitious goal: to challenge the status quo in agriculture. Plants edited with the new genome editing tools will incorporate useful traits and will not be classed as GMOs.Credit: reHAWKEYE / Alamy Stock Photo Inari is one of a several small companies with similarly lofty goals who are capitalizing on new editing technologies, such as CRISPR, and computational methods for predictive modeling. Such tools make crop development faster and less expensive, and potentially could give startups a shot at competing with the big players by sidestepping onerous and expensive regulatory oversight. Just a few years ago, a seed developer could plan on spending a decade and up to $100 million on bringing one new crop trait to market (Nat. That's not only because the old tools for altering the genetics of these crops, such as Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, were slower, more expensive and more unpredictable than CRISPR, but also because of regulations, both in the United States and especially in Europe.