The COVID-19 pandemic has also raised awareness of how disruptions in logistics and transportation can rapidly endanger food security. These are challenges that vertical farms, with their fresh local produce and shortened supply chain could help overcome. Unfold is a collaboration between Leaps by Bayer (Bayer AG's investment arm) and Temasek, a global investment company, and raised $30 million in an initial funding round. The market size for vertical farming was $2.1 billion in 2018 and is forecasted to reach $12 billion by 2026, according to a report by Fortune Business Insights. Bayer is the company that in 2018 acquired GMO crop producer Monsanto, but the new entity will not develop genetically modified seed varieties but instead pursue other breeding techniques, such as gene editing.