Driven by a mission to redefine food, Acre invests in companies creating systemic change in the food system to address the growing problems of human and environmental health. Acre makes venture-stage investments in highly disruptive platform businesses across the food value chain, with a particular focus on the agriculture, food tech, and consumer verticals. Taken together, these investments have the ability to form the foundation of an integrated new approach to food system evolution.

Acre Venture Partners

Serra Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in technology companies throughout the U.S. and in select international locations. Sectors we focus on include information technology, devices/instrumentation and agricultural technologies.

Serra Ventures

Fall Line Capital primarily seeks investment in broadacre farmland and agricultural technologies. The firm engages in purchasing and actively managing farmland throughout the United States, and by investing in technology companies that are strategic to our landholdings. Fall Line Capital's primary goal is to realize untapped productivity in farmland.

Fall Line Capital

E14 Fund are an investment fund focused on taking the biggest ideas hatched at MIT, deploying them to the real world, and scaling them for greatest impact.  At the E14 Fund, they help bring technologies out of the lab and into the world. Their network of advisors—investors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs—help their companies take prototypes to scale and raise further investment.  The E14 Fund supports companies across diverse fields—from biotechnology and smart cities to consumer electronics and manufacturing. They are a bridge that builds entrepreneurs from MIT and creates the paths to connect them with investors and industry experts who can help them scale. They believe diversity and inclusion are the seeds of innovation. Half of their companies have a female founder, and more than half have founders are from outside the United States.

The E14 Fund

Congruent Ventures is a venture capital firm that seeks to invest in Mobility and Urbanization, Energy Transition, Food and Agriculture, and Sustainable Production & Consumption sectors. We look for technology companies that will positively impact our energy and resource consumption. If we see an opportunity to partner with a like-minded team focused on scale across hardware, software, or services, we’re interested.

Congruent Ventures

SNR.vc

Andros

Bonsai Robotics

Bonsai Robotics provides vision-based automation solutions for off-road vehicles, such as agricultural machines. The company also offers analytics and telematics to help growers improve their performance, efficiency, and safety. The company is based in San Jose, California.

<div>Founded in 2022, Bonsai Robotics provides computer vision-based automation solutions for agriculture machine navigation and operations. Its patent-pending solution, Visionsteer, is integrated with original equipment manufacturer (OEM) equipment such as shakers, sprayers, and other heavy machinery to achieve autonomy, replacing traditional positioning systems with monocular camera technology. It also uses AI simultaneous localization and mapping technology technology to navigate without GPS in challenging conditions like dust, debris, and vibration. It claims to achieve a path accuracy of approximately &plusmn;4 inches.</div>

Sustainably solving the food shortages of the future

Smart Farming

Flory Industries Announces a Partnership with Bonsai Robotics to Deliver Autonomy and Driver Augmentation to Sweepers and Other Orchard Equipment

<div>
 
 Founded in 2022, Bonsai Robotics provides computer vision-based automation solutions for agriculture machine navigation and operations. Its patent-pending solution, Visionsteer, is integrated with original equipment manufacturer (OEM) equipment such as shakers, sprayers, and other heavy machinery to achieve autonomy, replacing traditional positioning systems with monocular camera technology. It also uses AI simultaneous localization and mapping technology technology to navigate without GPS in challenging conditions like dust, debris, and vibration. It claims to achieve a path accuracy of approximately &plusmn;4 inches.
 
 
 
 
 Furthermore, the company transforms monocular camera streams into 3D maps using computer vision and AI models and provides telematics-driven reporting and insights. In early 2023, growers, including Pomona Farming, participated in trials of Bonsai Robotics' technology.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 In April 2023, the Shockwave X, produced by Orchard Machinery Corporation (OMC), became the first product to use Bonsai's technology, transforming OMC's Shockwave line into autonomous harvesters. As of October 2023, the company had commenced demonstrations of a tractor system using its technology, with the second Shockwave X coming off the assembly line. With an initial focus on deploying its technology in California nut orchards, the company was working with several orchard machinery OEMs, including Flory Industries and Berendsen Fluid Power.
 
 
 
 
 In June 2023, Bonsai Robotics partnered with Danfoss Power Solutions, Swift Navigation, and HARD-LINE to integrate the companies' technologies into Danfoss' PLUS+1 Autonomy software platform to streamline development and vehicle prototyping.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 In October 2023, the company raised USD 13.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22352">
 seed funding
 </a>
 round to accelerate its product development and invest in hiring and sales and marketing.
 
</div>

Israeli startup Taranis, focuses on providing a complete digital agronomy solution to farmers using aerial imagery technology across the US, Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, and Australia. The company now monitors more than 20 million acres globally, 50% of which is located within the US.&nbsp;The startup captures aerial images using UAVs, which can be analyzed and compared using its own platform, and allows farmers to make precise decisions about planting. The company also operates an area called the “AgroBrain”, which allows precise identification of crop issues. The company claims to account for 70% of the global crop market and equips farmers with the tools to address issues in real time. Similar to peers like Ceres Imaging, Taranis has partnered with incumbent players like John Deere, Syngenta, BASF, and Climate Field View to expand its product reach. As such, Taranis is regarded as a promising startup in global precision agriculture.&nbsp;In 2018, the company expanded its footprint in the US when it acquired Mavrx, a US startup providing aerial imagery solutions to local farmers. Mavrx ran into financial difficulties and consolidation of the two companies yielded attractive opportunities. The consolidation allowed Taranis to integrate Mavrx’s product (full field imagery product with highest resolution on the market) into its platform, thereby fulfilling Taranis’ aim of providing a complete solution. The acquisition strengthened Taranis' offering rather than differentiating it. Taranis believes that further consolidation is likely with imagery and AI solutions.&nbsp;In July 2020, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the company raised USD 30 million in Series C funding. Key Investors included Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Micron Ventures, and Vertex Ventures Israel. The company expects to use the funds to create more relevant scouting products for growers through its platform and to also look towards expanding into Asia.&nbsp;Previously in January 2023, Taranis introduced <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taranis-introduces-acreforward-setting-a-new-standard-for-crop-intelligence-301734306.html">AcreForward</a> which provides unprecedented leaf-level insights into growers' crops at higher frequency throughout the season and captures opportunities in every acre to help ag retailers drive more value from every acre. In <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/taranis-launches-ag-assistant-to-transform-farm-decision-making-302198624.html">July 2024</a>, The company has introduced Ag assistant, powered by a generative AI model that integrates data sources from various modalities – including images, text and audio – and with a profound understanding of agronomy.

Taranis

Based in Canada, TELUS Agriculture offers integrated agriculture software solutions to increase profits of farmers and ranchers, agri-businesses, and agri-food, consumer goods and retail companies. Some of the farm management software solutions provided by the company are: Farm at Hand (crop management platform), TKXS (data management), Agrian (precision and informed decision making)&nbsp; and Muddy Boots (food traceability and supply chain management). As of July 2021, TELUS provides its solutions across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Armenia, Germany, China, and Australia.In July 2021, TELUS along with Rabobank, a Dutch food and agriculture bank, acquired Conservis to deliver a more robust Conservis platform to cater a diverse range of crops and livestock leveraging the former’s know-how and relationships across the food industry value chain and the latter’s portfolio of innovative digital farming technologies and solutions.&nbsp;Founded in 2009, Conservis via its web and mobile platform, provides farmers with planning tools, real-time data capture, and analytics to support better decision making and efficient reporting. Having launched as a permanent crop management platform for tree nuts, the platform has expanded its capabilities to fit crop types such as citrus and grapes.&nbsp; Since 2018, Rabo AgriFinance, a Rabobank subsidiary, has also been a development partner for Conservis to enhance the platform’s financial reporting capabilities.&nbsp;In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27853">March 2024</a>, The company&nbsp; has completed the acquisition of Proagrica, a provider of agronomic and business data solutions.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/decisive-farming-telus-agriculture-grainfox-140000751.html">October 2023</a>, The company has partnered with GrainFox announced a new partnership to bring more digital grain trade and sell options to Canadian farmers, providing technology-based solutions to support the ongoing transformation of Canada’s agriculture industry.

TELUS  Agriculture

Arable was established with the aim of providing measurements, insight, and predictions that enable growers to address risks with crop management. The key market of focus has been the US, though the company’s product has been used in 39 different countries.The company provides real-time data updates on irrigation and weather, such as reports on plants and crop management, to allow users to make informed decisions, while also being able to precisely measure different farming-related data such as temperature and humidity. Thus, the company falls under the categories of precision and smart farming.The company’s product, Arable Mark, is an irrigation management tool whichsynthesizes climate, plant, and soil data to produce visualizations. Through a web dashboard and smartphone app, Arable Mark exposes precipitation, crop water deficit, soil moisture, chilling hours, and other metrics gathered from sensors. Customers using Arable’s platform have reportedly shown to reduce irrigation by upto 50% and pesticide usage by 15%. In May 2023, the company commercially introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18120">Arable Mark 3 </a>which includes a 5 MP camera, an optional wind anemometer, and advanced plant and environmental sensing capabilities.The company’s customer base is quite broad in the agriculture value chain, and includes farmers, advisors, insurers, processors, lenders, and governments that find Arable useful to gauge facts on the ground in real time, and in turn reduce risk and increase certainty with decision making.Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2022, the company serves over 400 customers across 40 countries, and has partnered with agribusiness players like <a href="https://www.bayer.com/en/">Bayer </a>, <a href="http://basf.com/">BASF </a>, and <a href="https://www.nutrien.com/">Nutrien </a>, as well as large consumer food companies such as <a href="https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&amp;ai=DChcSEwjZmt7Vz8HsAhVB5bMKHZDRA-QYABAAGgJxbg&amp;ohost=www.google.com&amp;cid=CAESQOD2vDo-TeLvYzetoyv9iGSw4AnEyiwfscK9vNdjRJ0JPSZXAOBHMYcmrQDPGFTkEl8yzB3t5tB0WHRWzqyKtJE&amp;sig=AOD64_30Xpx6__U8VgKUxkOFpPHuSo99bw&amp;q&amp;adurl&amp;ved=2ahUKEwj--M3Vz8HsAhVCLKwKHa4MAgUQ0Qx6BAgUEAE">Mars </a>, <a href="https://www.lambweston.com/">Lamb Weston </a>, and <a href="https://www.tweglobal.com/">Treasury Wine Estates </a>, as well as fellow startups like <a href="https://www.planet.com/">Planet </a>, <a href="https://www.terramera.com/">Terramera </a>, and <a href="https://www.pivotbio.com/">Pivot Bio </a>primarily to expand the reach of its platform.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32961">August 2024</a>, Arable collaborated with Google to leverage agritech to promote water conservation and crop productivity among Nebraska farms.Funding and financials<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11852">In July 2022 </a>, Arable raised USD 40 million in Series C funding led by Galvanize Climate Solutions to support product development, delivery of new services, and international expansion.Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the company’s sales grew by 4x during 2020 and 2022, while reporting a 300% sales growth in Q3 2020 alone.

Arable

The company’s aerial spectral imagery helps growers optimize water and fertilizer application, focusing on the midstream of the agriculture value chain. The company uses low-flying planes to capture and process these aerial spectral images. The images provide accurate and real-time information on the water and nutrient status of every plant in the field. The company has been focusing on the US and Australia.&nbsp;Its technology can be applied to vineyards, orchards, and row crops like corn, soybeans, and wheat. The company is more of a Data-as-a-Service organisation where the grower will pay Ceres Imaging by the acre and receive imagery and necessary support to integrate the information with broader crop management practices. The company has partnered with established companies like John Deere and Climate FieldView, which find that Ceres Imaging’s solutions (pest and disease detection weeks ahead of human detection) align with their products and services.&nbsp;In <a href="https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2023/03/203925-ai-enhanced-data-analytics-product-suite-ceres-imaging-now-available-to-agriculture-insurers-lenders/">March 2023</a>, The company has unveiled Risk Solutions product suite, designed to power the next generation of risk models for insurers and lenders.In 2019, Ceres Imaging significantly expanded its operations with irrigated row crops throughout the central and western US.&nbsp;During the period, Ceres also nearly doubled its share of the&nbsp;California&nbsp;specialty crop market, going from managing 10% to 18% of all specialty crop acres in the state.&nbsp;In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16918">March 2023</a>, The company also expanded its services to Portugal and Spain.

Ceres Imaging

<div>
 
 SWIIM (Sustainable Water and Innovative Irrigation Management) System, with the support of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and various US grant universities, operates multi-patented technology developed to manage agricultural water budgets, allowing farmers to efficiently allocate water. The company focuses on the midstream of the agricultural value chain, supporting farmers through their harvesting process. The company’s technology is being widely deployed across western US states.
 
 
 The company provides a device that integrates with existing water measurement tools such as water gauges and analyzes real-time water usage via telemetry, offering farmers information on exactly how much water is used for crops and how much goes back into the ground.
 
 
 The company’s system can be used for any crop and irrigation system, lending its product flexibility and scope for potential expansion beyond the US. 
 
 
 In 2018, SWIIM acquired farm management software OnFarm Systems, which operates a customizable dashboard presenting data collected from a range of different internet of things (IoT) sources (weather, pest control, crop models) on any online device. The acquisition provided SWIIM customers with a differentiated product. Moreover, OnFarm’s 500 clients across the United States, Europe, and Asia at the time were accessible to SWIIM.  
 
 
 In 2020, SWIIM issued its own certification to farmers for the sustainable use of water, conveying to consumers that produce was grown with sustainable water management practices. In addition, SWIIM also introduced its “Certified Water Balance Report”, providing growers with an audited account of their water use. The company’s niche focus on water management, alongside its efforts at differentiation via acquisitions, arms it with potential to broaden its reach.
 
 
 
</div>

SWIIM Systems

Start-ups providing smart machinery such as agricultural robots and autonomous tractors, as well as other smart hardware devices for crop and livestock management.

Operators of marketplaces connecting farmers, suppliers, buyers, experts and advisors to streamline the farming process.

Start-ups offering software and related hardware solutions for crop operation, crop modelling, weather forecasting, soil analysis, and overall irrigation management using sensors, big data, AI and machine learning.

Startups offering software and related hardware solutions that facilitate real time data tracking and sharing on animal weight, future weight forecasts, and animal health and behavioural analysis using RFID tags, sensors, big data, AI and machine learning.

Start-ups offering drone or satellite imagery to measure and monitor fields, spray pesticides, accurately present biological parameters, control the quality of sowing, etc.

Crop and livestock monitoring startups use AI for their analytics platform

Uses robots for harvesting, weeding, and related agricultural purposes

Uses data analytics and sensors and related technologies to provide crop and livestock monitoring insights

Provides solutions that maximizes efficiency throughout the agriculture value chain

IoT-enabled sensors are used in machinery and equipment to help with data collection

Bonsai Robotics, a company specializing in computer vision-based automation solutions for agriculture, has raised $13.5 million in seed funding. Acre Venture Partners led the funding round, with participation from E14, Congruent, Serra Ventures, Fall Line Capital, SNR Ventures, Andros, and angel investors such as Travis Deyle, Lee Redden, and Matt Barnard. The funds will be used to accelerate product development and invest in hiring, sales, and marketing. Bonsai Robotics offers autonomous solutions integrated with original equipment manufacturers (OEM) equipment, allowing them to operate in adverse conditions without GPS. The company has partnered with OEMs like OMC, Flory Industries, and Danfoss, and conducted trials with growers, including Pomona Farming.

Bonsai Robotics

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless