Tag: Latin America

Säo Paolo, Brazil—Dec 8, 2020: SeeTree, an AI-powered end-to-end service that provides growers with intelligence on trees and tree clusters announced today that it has raised $30 million 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 an Israeli Agtech company, will allow SeeTree to scale globally, grow the R&D and customer-facing teams, and broaden services to cover new crops.

Other investors include Citrosuco, one of the world’s largest orange juice producers, with sales to over 100 countries), Orbia Ventures (corporate VC of Orbia, a global provider of innovative solutions for rapid urbanization and water and food scarcity that owns Netafim, the leading drip-irrigation system in the world), and Kubota (Japanese manufacturer specializing in tractor and ag equipment). Existing investor Hanaco Ventures (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 revolutionize 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 United States, Chile and South Africa and a team of 120 professionals, SeeTree monitors over 50 million trees around the world, which will grow to 1 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” says Talpaz.

SeeTree’s system identifies the health and growth rates of every tree in a farmer’s grove and enables the creation of personalized 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 analyzes 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, irrigation systems we can unlock additional optimizations to further increase the value to our farmers,” says Talpaz.

Shai Albaranes, VP Innovation and Ventures at Orbia: “This investment represents both Orbia’s and Netafim’s desire to expand its investments in the field of innovation and technology. As strategic investors, we see the integration of technology in Netafim’s global operations as a market leader. Joining Netafim and Orbia provides start-ups with access to international markets more easily, with the support and assistance of a leading global company.

SeeTree has scaled in a massive, but frankly difficult-to-penetrate, market,” describes Pasha Romanovski, cofounder and Partner at Hanaco Ventures and Board Director at SeeTree. “The SeeTree team, led by Israel, has been able to productize a tremendous amount of deep technology into a platform accessible to farmers. They’ve developed great technology and have been able to execute in an important market ripe for innovation – trees.”