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By Claire Robinson and Jonathan Matthews
The U.K.-based ag-biotech firm Wild Bioscience specializes in “AI-powered precision crop breeding” — more accurately described as plant genetic engineering supported by artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Now the company has secured a massive $60 million investment from a group led by the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), a think tank founded by U.S. Big Tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
Larry Ellison is the co-founder of the software company Oracle. He is also a media mogul, top donor to the Israel Defense Forces and member of President Donald Trump’s inner circle. And he is moving into genetically modified (GM) seeds.
Wild Bioscience is carrying out open field trials in England of GM wheat, engineered for more efficient photosynthesis.
According to Wild Bioscience co-founder Dr. Ross Hendron, the company is trying to “‘replay the tape of life’ to see how crops like wheat could have evolved with better traits.”
AgTechNavigator paraphrases Hendron as saying: “The company can’t run fast evolution experiments in plants … so it simulates them using large, diverse datasets, most of which it generates itself.”
That’s where the AI comes in.
Tony Blair Institute: Promoting Ellison’s obsession with AI and GM
Ellison is also funding another British organization. Since 2021, he has donated a quarter of a billion pounds to the Tony Blair Institute (TBI), the think tank founded by the former U.K. prime minister. That makes Ellison by far the TBI’s biggest donor.
His patronage is said to have transformed the TBI and its goals, making it even more technology-obsessed than it already was, particularly with regard to AI.
The TBI has published boosterish reports promoting AI, gene editing and genetic engineering in general.
Ellison’s enthusiasm for both AI and genetic engineering is reflected in a January 2024 TBI institute report, “A New National Purpose: Leading the Biotech Revolution,” which promotes a marriage between the two technologies.
Starmer parroting Blair’s language
In July 2024, just five days after Keir Starmer was elected as U.K. prime minister, Blair told the TBI’s Future of Britain conference that AI was the “game-changer” they were looking for.
According to Lighthouse Reports, “Within months, Starmer was parroting Blair’s language — and TBI was in the box seat of the government’s nascent AI policy pushing Oracle’s interests and its founder’s world view.”
An inevitable consequence of the financial ties between Ellison and the TBI is, according to an article published in Publica, that Blair’s influence with world leaders and infatuation with technology and AI is “now geared towards marketing the services of Ellison.”
Publica reported:
“Conversations with more than a dozen former TBI employees who advised or drew up policy recommendations for governments across nine countries in the Global South reveal how their work ranged from explicitly promoting Oracle’s services and acting as a ‘sales engine’ to recommending tech solutions that are potentially harmful or bizarrely divorced from local realities.”
Wild Bioscience is a British-based spinout from the University of Oxford. Before Ellison’s $60 million investment, it was described as a “small” company, with a balance sheet of just 7.5 million euros.
Ellison’s recent infusion of funds obviously changes everything — the company is no longer small and, in principle, it can leverage more funds to generate more GM crops.
And it’s highly likely that any genetically modified organisms it produces will not reflect the needs and interests of British farmers and citizens, but those of a narrowly focused U.S. tech billionaire who wants a return on his investments.
Finally, it’s worth noting that, as with Bill Gates, Ellison’s move into GM seeds shows the growing influence of immensely wealthy tech titans over future biotech developments.
This is also apparent in the area of human genetics.
Originally published by GMWatch.
Jonathan Matthews is the director at GMWatch.
Claire Robinson is an editor at GMWatch.
