The AgTech is an ever-growing industry. But, strangely, it stays undervalued by entrepreneurs. Or maybe it even lacks creativity, which shaves away competition out of the industry.
Crunchbase lists only 1,500 Agriculture-related companies compared to 3,500 companies from Transportation, where the titans like Uber, Lyft, and Didi run the show. In the meantime, a closer look reveals an almost equal ratio between the number of startups and funds raised.
Crunchbase lists 125 ag tech companies with total funding amount greater than $10 million. Also, there are 290 transportation-related companies with the same amount of funding. If you do the math, turns out that 1 of 12 companies get $10 million funding both from Transportation and Agriculture industries. In comparison 1 out of 20 Advertising startups has a chance to get $10 million in funds.
If you lower the “funding” bar, the ratio shifts in favor of AgTech startups. $1 million funding gets one out of 4.4 agriculture software companies, compared to 6.5 in transportation app startups. Turns out that AgTech has ever-green inflow of capital and minimum competition. But the industry lacks creativity, and some fields like AgTech software (with only 209 companies listed) desperately needs it.
Top 9 AgTech Software Startups
LumiGrow
LumiGrow develops LED-lightning hardware and smart cloud-based software that controls and adapts LED preferences according to lighting conditions. The smart algorithm of lightning scheduling of LumiGrow promises to increase yield quality, and plant characteristics.
Gamaya
Gamaya improves efficiency & sustainability of farming by offering compelling agronomy solutions, enabled by hyperspectral imaging and AI. The algorithm minimizes costs and environmental impact of farming. In addition, it makes possible early detection of disease and weeds on crops. Moreover, Gamaya supplies its agtech software with prediction algorithm that eases risk management throughout the growing season.
Vence
Vence makes a hardware solution and AgTech software app for remote control of cattle. The solution promises to increases the utilization of the available grasses, removes costs associated with fencing and addition labor. Vence can controls animal movement by sets virtual fence lines. Plus, it constantly monitors animal well being, which is handy when you’ve got a large livestock.
The Yield
This company is focused on the development of farm sensing products, software analytics, and web app to work with sensing data. The company also relies heavily on artificial intelligence and predictive models, which allows their apps to convert the sensing data into a 7-day forecast about crops performance and yield.
Taranis, Tel Aviv, Israel
Taranis develop a scouting app that is able to predict and prevent crop disease and pest losses.
The company uses straightforward deep learning algorithm educated on proprietary data sets. The datasets were prepared by gathering sub-mm aerial imagery, field sensors, satellite imagery, weather forecast and data from its field. The ultimate goal of Taranis is to help farmers increase their yields and cut costs.
Pivot Bio, Berkeley, CA
The company fine-tunes microbe biome across the field in order to increase atmospheric nitrogen level and raise its supply to the crops.
Shortly speaking the process goes in 3 steps.
- Collect soils to isolate and identify microbes. Create a sophisticated map of the soil microbiome.
- Determine key microbes with the potential to fix atmospheric nitrogen and live in symbiosis with corn.
- Fine-tune microbes so they could release required nitrogen to the corn plant.
FieldIn
This company specializes in pest management and optimization. FieldIn supplies growers with an end-to-end pest management software solution tailored specifically for the type of trees and crops you grow.
Technically speaking the startup supplies growers with a sensor that track spraying tractors. Once the data is acquired the software optimize the accuracy and efficiency of spraying based on the amount specific crop needs.
VitalFields
This is all-in-one agriculture company that offers an easy-to-use farm management system for farmers to plan, manage and analyze their field activities. The software includes simplified tracking and reporting functions. Also, it helps farmers to ensure compliance with European Union environmental standards.
Big AgTech Accelerators
In addition, there are two agricultural business accelerators that actively invest in the startups and are capable of sharing a hands-on experience.
The Yield Lab, St. Louis, MI
The Yield Lab is focused on bridging the critical gap between innovation and successful businesses by supporting agriculture technology companies. The Yield Lab provides new AgTech companies with $100,000 in funding, mentors, and connections supported by an agriculturally solid framework of organizations and businesses from the St. Louis area.
The Trendlines Group
It is an innovating company that invests in and incubates innovation-based medical and agricultural technologies. It also involves in all aspects of portfolio companies from technology development to business building.
Bottom Line
So good so far, now you’ve got the list of most promising AgTech companies in the industry. Not to mention those are the companies with $10+ million in funding. We hope this list will inspire you to get into the agriculture-related industry. As it turned out, this is where the least competition going on, and we gladly develop one more project for this niche. Because, at the end of the day, what drives us the most are simple things that we people get used to.
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