Food security isn’t an abstract headline when you live in a place like Jackson Hole. Four months of growing season, 90 percent of food shipped in, and shelves that can empty quick when the trucks don’t roll. Vertical Harvest Inc. answered that problem not with a hobby greenhouse but with a tenth of an acre in downtown Jackson that produces the equivalent of up to 10 acres of crops. Since 2016, they’ve been growing more than produce; they’ve been growing proof that communities can reclaim control over what they eat.
The team behind this pivot? Co-founder and CEO Nona Yehia, an architect who treated agriculture like urban design, and Caroline Croft Estay, who turned her background in behavioral health into the Grow Well employment model that anchors the company’s inclusive workforce. Add in co-founder Penny McBride, now strategic advisor and vice chair of the Association for Vertical Farming, and you’ve got a founding trio that fused design, farming, and social equity into one tight operation. The result: careers for people with intellectual and physical disabilities alongside fresh food for a region that needed both.
Now, in 2025, Vertical Harvest is scaling that vision. The company just secured a new strategic investment from Raiven Capital (Dubai), building on their $8.35 million Series A in 2022, co-led with Nicoya AB. That round brought in investors like Oatly co-founder Björn Öste and Bain Capital Ventures’ Mike Krupka, and added Raiven founding partner Paul Dugsin to the board. Since then, the capital stack has climbed high, $59.5 million in project financing for the Westbrook, Maine farm, led by Madison One and Waterside Commercial Finance with USDA guarantees, REAP loans, Efficiency Maine’s C-PACE program, Nuveen Green Capital, and FAME funding. Add in direct loans, and the total tops out near $70 million across equity and debt.
This isn’t capital for capital’s sake. The Jackson farm turns out 100,000 pounds of produce a year. The Maine farm, opening in early 2025, scales that twentyfold to 2.5 million pounds, with half the workforce expected to be people with disabilities. Detroit is next, 60,000 square feet of facility, 205,000 square feet of canopy, and 2.2 million pounds of vegetables annually in partnership with Bedrock.
Technology drives the yield. Hydroponics cut water use by 90 to 95 percent. Multi-story systems stack crops by climate needs, greens below, tomatoes up top. Partners Siemens and Elevated Signals power the digital backbone with AI, predictive analytics, and automation balanced with human-centered employment. It’s agriculture as infrastructure, not trend.
The bigger play? Ten new farms in the next five years. Chicago and Providence already in the mix. Distribution kept local, within 100 to 150 miles. And with Raiven’s global reach, the Middle East is in view as a proving ground for food security and climate resilience.
Vertical Harvest is showing that farming can grow food, careers, and communities at the same time. Nona Yehia and Caroline Croft Estay aren’t just farming vertically; they’re raising the bar on what agriculture can mean.
