SeeTree, an AI-powered, end-to-end service that provides growers with intelligence on trees and tree clusters, has raised US$30mn in a Series B funding round led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group
This third round of funding, one of the largest investment rounds for the Israeli agtech company, will enable SeeTree to scale globally, expand its R&D and customer-oriented teams and broaden its services to cover new crops.
Other investors include Citrosuco, one of the world’s largest orange juice producers with sales to more than 100 countries; Orbia Ventures, corporate VC of Orbia, a global provider of innovative solutions for rapid urbanisation and water and food scarcity that owns Netafim, the leading drip irrigation system in the world; and Kubota, a Japanese manufacturer specialising in tractor and agricultural equipment. Existing investor Hanaco Ventures, one of the leading Tel Aviv and New York-based VC who led the Series A round, is participating as well.
“All of our new investors are true partners who believe in the power of our platform to increase productivity and help address the impact of the climate and other major challenges in agricultural production today and going forward to the future,” said Israel Talpaz, SeeTree co-founder and CEO.
“Artificial intelligence can revolutionise agriculture and have a transformative impact on productivity, the environment and the livelihoods of farmers,” said Stephanie von Friedeburg, interim managing director and executive vice president and chief operating officer of IFC. “We are excited to invest in SeeTree’s technology and help leverage precision agriculture in emerging markets.”
With operations in Brazil, the US, Chile and South Africa and a team of 120 professionals, SeeTree monitors more than 50 million trees worldwide, which will grow to one billion trees by 2023.
“We started with citrus and are servicing the largest citrus growers globally. We have a strong playbook and will continue scaling within citrus. We are now equally focused on growing our offerings into new crops such as almonds, olives and hazelnuts, where we are already deployed and supporting farmers,” said Talpaz.
SeeTree’s system identifies every tree’s health and growth rates in a farmer’s grove and enables the creation of personalised cultivation plans for each tree or cluster of trees. SeeTree collects ultra high-resolution images captured by drones and multi-spectral sensors, tree and soil samples and analyses the data through the platform’s machine learning algorithms. Ultimately, farmers receive an easy-to-use product with features such as tree health, pest and disease tracking.
“Our vision is to enable the Tree Farming 4.0 Revolution with the Intelligence-per-Tree that we provide. SeeTree as a standalone solution, can reduce operational expenses by 20-40%. By connecting SeeTree to tractors and irrigation systems, we can unlock additional optimisations to further increase the value to our farmers,” said Talpaz.
