SeeTree is an Israeli startup which offers farmers intelligence on trees and tree clusters through AI controlled drones. The company 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.
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.
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Leave it up to Startup Nation to combine drone technology with artificial intelligence in order to improve agriculture. Tevel Aerobotics Technologies is another example of such a company. It is an Israeli startup which utilizes drones to harvest fruit. Tevel Aerobotics says that its mission is to lead the transformation from manual fruit picking into on-demand, flying autonomous robots.
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We are excited to announce our Series B funding round!
Check out our LinkedIn post here: https://t.co/0szXxMzu4K@orbia @NetafimCorp @IFC_org https://t.co/taxJUS43O8
— SeeTree_AI (@SeeTree_AI) December 9, 2020
SeeTree, a leading player in the agriculture tech space, was founded in August 2017 by former intelligence officers and serial entrepreneurs to bring technology disruption into the world of farming.
The company is based in Tel Aviv with offices in California and Brazil, and has 40 employees including global experts in artificial intelligence and agronomy. SeeTree offers farmers an end-to-end service to manage and optimize the health and productivity of their trees.
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 urbanization and water and food scarcity that owns Netafim, the leading drip irrigation system in the world; and Kubota, a Japanese manufacturer specializing in tractor and agricultural equipment. Existing investor Hanaco Ventures, a 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, 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,” said Talpaz.
