Cropsy Technologies, the New Zealand-based agritech startup, is proud to announce the successful completion of its second funding round, raising an impressive $1.7 million in an extended and over-subscribed capital raise. This achievement marks a significant milestone for the company and positions it for global expansion, thanks to the backing of prominent U.S. investor Seraph Group.
The trailblazing company is poised to reshape the future of fruit growing with its ground-breaking crop monitoring technology. Their cutting-edge solution combines automated, continuous, and GPS-tracked high-definition image capture with AI-enabled software.
Each Cropsy scanner analyses over 30,000 vines per day in real-time, integrating with growers existing tractors to seamlessly profile critical aspects of a vineyard – leaves, shoots, fruits, canes, and trunks – with no extra labour. Sunlight, shadows, and reflections are no match for Cropsy’s scanner, ensuring accurate details like colours and textures are preserved, regardless of the time of day or weather conditions.
Cropsy’s transformative technology is currently crafted specifically for vineyards, providing a multitude of benefits with no additional effort from the grower; localising disease presence in its earliest stages, tracking missing and dead vines, analysing pruning status, counting buds, inflorescences, and bunches for yield estimation – all on a per-vine level, tracking each plant down to the centimetre. The focus on global enterprise winegrowers means the team has a deep understanding of problems and challenges at scale, keeping them ahead of the competition.
Cropsy's capital raise not only received continued support from existing investors such as Angel Investors Marlborough, NZGCP, Icehouse Ventures, and K1W1 but also attracted its first U.S. investor, Seraph Group – a milestone for the company.
Seraph Group, founded in 2003 in San Francisco and Atlanta, is an American venture capital firm known for its unique network of 370+ accomplished investors who support entrepreneurs. Seraph Group’s Founder and CEO, Tuff Yen, expressed his enthusiasm for Cropsy, stating, “they apply their technology to enhance the bottom line for growers in viticulture using machine vision and intelligent software, leading the way to a new era of improved productivity while reducing costs. We invested because this is the way of the future, and the founding team exhibits the commitment to see this through.”
The round was so successful that it extended beyond its original oversubscription limit, from $1.5 million to $1.7 million, to accommodate the interests of new investors, even amid global capital market uncertainties.
Lead investor, Tracy Atkin, of Angel Investors Marlborough says it has been an extremely tough year for start-ups raising in a post-pandemic and recessionary environment. “For Cropsy to not only reach their target but exceed it is a testament to their team and technology. It is a fantastic achievement and one I was proud to support as lead investor for their second round on behalf of Angel Investors Marlborough.”
“2023 has shaped up to be a momentous year for us,” says CEO Ali Alomari. “We’ve reached our first international customers in the U.S. and France, and the support of Seraph Group aligns perfectly with our attention on the U.S. as a key market.” Earlier in 2022, Ali mentioned that Cropsy’s internal milestone is to scan 10 million vines by the end of 2023. “We’ve passed 6 million new vines right now, and at this rate, we’ll reach our target of 10 million new vines by the end of this year.”
With 30 scanners deployed, and more in the pipeline, Cropsy is set on a clear path forward. COO Leila Deljkovic emphasised the company’s focus is all on expanding geographies and scaling the technology. New Zealand is a character-building place to grow deep tech companies like Cropsy. “We’re extremely efficient simply because of where we’re based. It’s a distinct advantage.”
Founded by four young engineers fresh out of university in 2019, Ali (26), Leila (26), Rory (26), Winston (24), Cropsy Technologies has grown to ten full-time staff and is actively recruiting brilliant talent who thrive on solving challenging problems in hardware, big data, AI, and computer vision with a multi-disciplinary engineering team.
“Working at Cropsy has provided some of the most challenging yet interesting problems I have gotten to work on. Being on the bleeding edge of technology allows us to push the envelope, and keep our skills top-notch,” says Cropsy’s senior software engineer Cedric Bournville.
Source: https://www.scoop.co.nz/
