The Omdena “Impact Tech Startups Series” comprises game-changing startups, stories, and thought-leadership pieces from leading mission-driven ventures. The series is part of Omdena´s AI program for impact-driven startups. 

Here is a list of top AgTech startups you should know, ranging from early to growth stage, which are revolutionizing agriculture with AI.

Introduction

AgTech startups are all the rage these days and with good reason. 

Their innovative technologies and business models are helping to revolutionize farming, making this historically low-tech and high-labor industry more efficient than ever before. 

Through a combination of AI, blockchain, advanced data analytics, and other technologies, these startups are laying the foundation for our food system of the future — an automated one that’s highly productive, adaptable, and sustainable. 

What is the role of agriculture in artificial intelligence? 

Agriculture has been a vital part of the modern world for centuries, supplying food to millions of people. But as farming has evolved, so too have the challenges faced by farmers. 

Crop yields are declining and arable land is shrinking, making it more difficult than ever to feed the growing population. 

With this in mind, entrepreneurs around the globe are developing new technologies to improve agriculture at an exponential rate and drive sustainable food production forward. 

In fact, agricultural technology startups are expected to be worth over $5 trillion dollars by 2025. From drones that monitor crop health and soil moisture levels to robots that weed crops without human assistance, the field of agtech is experiencing a revolution fueled by artificial intelligence.

Why is innovation in agriculture important? 

Agriculture is one of the most important and influential sectors in the global economy. The sector’s gross output accounts for about 4% of the world’s economic product and employs over a billion people. 

Furthermore, agriculture has an outsized impact on environmental issues such as water quality, deforestation, soil fertility, biodiversity, and climate change. 

On the other hand, new innovations are needed to meet demands for food production, feed the planet’s growing population, and ensure that future generations have access to safe and nutritious food.

For these reasons, it’s no surprise that so many startups are innovating within agriculture. From producing food more efficiently to reducing pesticide use, these companies are looking to make a big difference in how we grow our food.

What are the advantages of AI in agriculture?

Farmers are using the latest technology to make their jobs easier and more productive – from drones to sensors, we’re seeing a shift in how our food is grown and distributed. 

Farmers can now use data from sensors or satellite imagery to determine what will grow best in their soil or monitor livestock without having to physically check on them as often. 

These advancements help farmers increase their crop yield by 20% while saving 15-25% of water. They also help keep an accurate record of all the data collected so that decisions can be made quickly when changes need to be made. 

Plus, these innovations are relatively affordable for small farms which typically don’t have access to this type of equipment. Some startups even offer flexible leasing options so that every farm has the opportunity to enjoy these benefits. 

Other startups specialize in creating tailored solutions for individual farms. Data-collecting technologies paired with AI give farmers peace of mind by providing an accurate picture of the health and needs of their crops and livestock.

20 AgTech Startups Revolutionizing Agriculture with AI

1. SeeTree 

Agtech startup SeeTree was founded in 2017 to provide farmers with critical data to help them manage and optimize the health of their trees. 

The company has developed AI solutions that:

• Track the health of each tree, including identifying underperforming trees and strong clusters
• Monitor the efficiency of farming operations, provide actionable insights and measure the impact of various farming practices
• Optimize the per-tree count and provide estimates before a harvest
• Digitize farms to allow the management of each tree and continuously collect data from each tree
• Provide access to global coverage for millions of trees through a single platform 
• Aerial, ground, and boots-on-the-ground data collection systems to facilitate optimum data collection to develop better strategies

The company has had two rounds of funding amounting to $44.7m after three funding rounds.

Omdena Impact Startups Series: Top Agtech Startups Driving Agriculture with AI (Recording)

with Seetree.ai and Startupbootcamp Foodtech

 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIr2fsMSj8g[/embedyt]

2. Weedbot 

Weedbot is an impact-driven agtech startup that provides high-precision laser weeding technology to make organic farming easier. Weedbot, which was founded in 2020, has since had two funding rounds that raised €190K.

The company recently collaborated with Omdena to scale its AI precision weeding laser technology through Omdena’s AI Incubator. The result from working with Omdena was a high-speed plant image recognition neural network that can identify plant images at speeds of 12ms per second. The laser weeding robot will help farmers identify and remove weeds using a laser beam, thus avoiding the use of pesticides in food production.

3. Clarifruit 

The agtech startup Clarifruit offers automated end-to-end quality control software throughout the fresh produce supply chain. The company develops solutions for growers, marketers, wholesalers, and retailers to help them produce, distribute and sell fresh fruits and vegetables consistently. 

Clarifruit´s solution includes a customizable big data and analytics platform through which users can set their inspection process and quality control standards. The platform also collects data allowing users to glean insights to boost their operational efficiency and productivity. 

The Israeli-based startup has raised $6 million in funding. 

4. Agranimo 

Agranimo is an agtech startup focused on reducing waste in all stages of the fresh food supply chain. The company develops automation solutions to help towards achieving the long-term sustainability of food consumption. The company has a deep knowledge accumulated from years of research and farm management practice. The company taps into its knowledge to drive innovation in agronomic science and data technologies.

Recently, the company received €2 million from Nectar Holdings, a company of HL Hall & Sons to support Agranimo’s efforts in developing solutions to meet the needs of small farmers and corporate clients looking for climate data and soil analysis. 

5. Kilimo 

Kilimo is a big data water irrigation startup focused on helping farmers realize higher yields with less water. The company has made significant strides in saving more than 4.2 trillion gallons of water across 148,000 acres in monitored lands across the US, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mexico, and Peru. 

The company feeds satellite images, weather, and field data into its Big Data engine to recommend the optimal irrigation for each crop. Through its irrigation innovation, the company improves crop yields by 30% and water use efficiency by 70%. 

6. Farmbot 

Farmbot Monitoring Solutions is an Australian agtech company designed to provide remote monitoring solutions for agribusiness. The company uses sensors with the latest satellite technology for remote monitoring of water tank levels, pressure, and trends. The system also predicts water usage patterns and potential problems. 

Its solutions also include staff-movement and diesel remote monitoring solutions to provide users with key insights for their operations. Its range of products includes:

• Water level sensors
• Rain gauge
• Wireless trough sensors
• Diesel level sensors
• Water flow sensors
• Line pressure sensors
• Safety check-in 

7. Hummingbird 

Hummingbird Technologies is an imagery analytics provider that uses predictive analytics to deliver plant-specific analysis and application maps. The company utilizes AI, deep learning, soil data, weather data, and historical yield data to provide data-driven insights and decision-making tools to optimize global food production. 

The company also develops precision farming solutions to measure, monitor, and verify sustainable agriculture processes and outcomes. Some of the capabilities of their solutions include:

• Identifying field boundaries
• Automating field boundary detection
• Predicting the expected yield 
• Identifying fertilizer and pesticide needs on various field sections
• Comparing the performance of various field
• Satellite imagery to help in monitoring upstream food supply chains

The precision farming solutions provider has raised $17.6 million in four funding rounds. 

8. Earth Rover 

Earth Rover is an agtech startup that develops autonomous farming robots for precision farming. Its AI and robotics solutions are designed to help farmers grow chemical-free food, reduce waste and increase profitability. 

The company uses ExoMars Rover space technology to develop precision farming solutions. Some of the company’s solutions include proprietary AI algorithms, selective vegetable harvesting, and light weeding technology. 

Its solutions can provide plant-level data with actionable insights to help farmers maximize the value of their operations and profitability. 

The company has since its inception, raised $385.7K in four funding rounds with investors such as Pollybell, Organic Farm, and Par Equity. 

9. Aleph Farms

Cultured meat startup Aleph Farms is an Israeli-based tech farm working towards a resilient and environment-friendly meat sector. The company develops cultured meat from animal cells obtained through a small biopsy. These cells are then developed in an environment that mimics the animal’s body. 

Aleph Farm completed its series B funding in July 2021, raising $105 million bringing its total funding to more than $118 million. 

The company intends to scale up its manufacturing and expand its operations to the global market with a targeted initial market launch in 2022. 

10. Arugga 

Arugga is an AI farming company that develops ground robots for use in greenhouses to provide automated and data-driven insights and solutions to transform greenhouse vegetable farming. The company has raised $6.8 million in three funding rounds, including the June 2021 Series A funding round. 

The company’s robots use computer vision to determine the flowers which are ready for pollination. These flowers have both male and female parts, and the pollen moves from the male parts to the female parts by vibration. In addition to facilitating pollination, these robots collect insightful data along the way. 

The company’s robots seek to replace the use of manufactured bumblebees with reliable robots that can perform more than the pollination work, leading to higher yields. 

11. SkyMaps Agrimatics 

SkyMaps Agrimatics is another agtech startup that’s also a part of Omdena’s AI incubator. The agtech startup aims to facilitate agricultural sustainability through precision farming solutions that use remote sensing technologies and advanced image analysis. 

The company worked with Omdena to identify different machine learning models and computer vision techniques that would help reduce the use of herbicides in farming, thus reducing the negative impact of herbicides and pesticides. Following the two-month Omdena challenge, the project resulted in a machine learning model that can identify weed and crop species. 

12. Red Sea Farms 

Red Sea Farms is a Saudi Arabian agtech startup facilitating commercial farming using saltwater. The company aims to develop saltwater technology to allow food production in water-scarce communities. 

The company’s main products include saltwater greenhouses and its patent-pending saltwater-cooling and Coretex control system technology. The company’s technology allows farmers to grow food in greenhouses using saltwater and smart technology systems. 

Red Sea Farms also works with farmers in a consultancy role to provide grower services, project, and operations management, technical advice, and design guidance to farmers. 

The company has raised $20.3 million in five funding rounds, with the latest being a Series A round in August 2021. 

13. Agronomeye

Agronomeye is an Australian AgTech startup helping farmers get a bird’s eye view of their farms with their new digital model that optimizes on-farm decision-making and enhances business and natural capital transactions.

Using ultra high-resolution imagery, Agronomeye’s Dynamic Foundation platform delivers highly detailed and dynamic models of farms to help individual farmers know the risks and opportunities specific to their own farms.

With Agronomeye’s Digital Foundation, farmers can unlock engagement across

• Land Adaptation
• Agronomy
• Natural Capital
• Sustainability
• Banking
• Insurance
• Real Estate

14. Kurai

KURAI provides technology that seeks to reduce laborious and time-consuming aspects of agriculture by using cutting-edge methods such as drones, artificial intelligence, and IoT. 

The organization’s goal is to revolutionize the way people farm for profit through data-driven practices in order for society to feed its ever growing population without sacrificing health benefits or sustainability goals.

Kurai, based in Pretoria, South Africa and founded by Clive Mathe currently manufactures drones that take care of spraying crops all on their own, which advocates for less time spent doing tedious tasks.

15. Telaqua

Telaqua provides farmers with an innovative solution for the management of irrigation. Through remote monitoring and control of key points in their irrigation network, Telaqua can provide them with reliable and continuous overviews of all their farms and guarantee that their agricultural system is running smoothly.

Telaqua is located in Marseille, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France.

Telaqua seeks to achieve agricultural efficiency through its expertise in internet of things (IoT) and big data technology. For example, since 2018 they have been able to help users manage their own systems remotely; monitoring sensor data that has been inputted onto an app. 

This solution contributes to reaching a higher level of irrigation management while sustaining the operations our customers desire from their farm managers. The Telaqua’s Solution can be personalized depending on customer-specific technical requirements or soil conditions with guidance from experts.

16. Zoom Agri

ZOOMAGRI provides a detailed analysis of agricultural commodities through artificial intelligence, computer vision, and internet of things. ZoomAgri plans to use cutting-edge technologies to automate the inspection of food and commodity products.

ZOOMAGRI has raised a total of $9.9M in funding over 4 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Sep 10, 2021, from a Seed round. ZOOMAGRI is funded by 4 investors. Artesian VC and GrainInnovate are the most recent investors.

Zoom Agri products are

• Zoombarley: A revolutionary innovation for malting barley.
• ZoomSpex: For physical quality imaging of grains and oilseeds

17. Sera

Sera digital concierge utilizes information from various sources, such as greenhouse control systems and satellite data to forecast the success of farmers’ crops. 

SERA is committed to simplifying the complexities of horticulture. To them, there is nothing more important than guaranteeing that humanity has continued access to healthy and affordable produce for generations to come. 

They use cutting-edge technology like IoT machines, machine learning algorithms, and advanced analytics to ensure plant growth and quality.

Sera built a concierge mobile application to empower every grower with the right expertise to be successful. The AI app combines the latest crop analytics with human-led expertise.

18. Fieldwork Robotics

Fieldwork Robotics has been developing and selling robots for the last few years that are both soft, selective, and autonomous. The startup was founded by Dr. Martin Stoelen of the University of Plymouth in 2016 at Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. 

Dr Stoelen has also contributed to the development of a cauliflower harvesting robot system and a tomato picker in cooperation with Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Fieldwork Robotics’ goal is to develop robots that harvest soft fruit and vegetables efficiently, addressing the long-term problem of labor shortages in agriculture.

Fieldwork Robotics has raised a total of $388K in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 14, 2020 from a Venture – Series Unknown round. Fieldwork Robotics is funded by Frontier IP Group plc.

19. TartanSense

TartanSense is an AI-powered robot solution provider helping farmers of all sizes do what they love. Tartan Sense revolutionizes agriculture through the use of robotics and AI-assisted computer vision systems. They offer potential savings for farmers by reducing input costs by up to ninety percent.

The company has designed two different robots so far, the Bladerunner (Tractor pulled Mechanical Weeder and Spot Sprayer) and Brijot (Independent Remote Controlled Compact Robot) to help farmers grow and make money doing what they do best. 

TartanSense has raised a total of $7.1M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Aug 25, 2021 from a Series A round. TartanSense is funded by 4 investors. Blume Ventures and FMC Ventures are the most recent investors.

20. Source.ag

Source.ag has created a sustainable platform for agricultural development. It facilitates access to fresh fruit and vegetables by applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to greenhouses. 

The company also assists other producers in developing new technology for these buildings, taking into consideration different environmental factors as well as the constraints imposed by suppliers and natural resources. 

Through its AI-powered simulations, Source optimizes growing conditions in order to maximize efficiency while minimizing water usage. 

This allows it to increase production while protecting the environment at an accelerated pace that is helping those who are undernourished and live close to areas where food insecurity is prevalent among populations.

Source.ag has raised a total of $10M in funding over 1 round. This was a Seed round raised on Mar 2, 2022. Source.ag is funded by 6 investors. Acre Venture Partners and Astanor Ventures are the most recent investors.

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