Bluewhite co-founders, (Photo Bluewhite)
Bluewhite, an Israeli startup and autonomous farming technology company with a platform that provides Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) enabling farms to run themselves autonomously, just raised another $39 million. The firm has now raised a total of $89 million in investment to date and with this latest raise Bluewhite shows that Israel Startup Nation is still open for business despite the ongoing war in Gaza, but, more importantly, that Israel is still a center for agricultural innovation.
Israel Startup Nation is big on agtech. It boasts startups like CropX, which provides water solutions for farmers, Equinom, which offers plant based nutrition solutions, and SupPlant, an Israeli agtech startup that develops sensors that can send signals from plants.
Israel has always been at the forefront of aggrotech since the early days of the first Zionist settlements. The country may now be known more as Startup Nation for all of its success in the high tech world. But until recently it was best known for its agricultural innovations. The pioneers of early Israel famously drained swamps, planted orange groves (oranges are not indigenous to the Middle East) and irrigated deserts to grow all sorts of crops. Israel was so successful at this that the country early on sent experts to help third world nations in Africa develop their agriculture.
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So, it is only natural for Israel to combine its agricultural background with high-tech as is evidenced in firms like Bluewhite.
Bluewhite raised the $39 million in a Series C round of funding led by Insight Partners, with participation from new investors Alumni Ventures and LIP Ventures, among others.
Founded in 2017 as Blue White Robotics by Ben Alfi, Yair Shahar and Aviram Shmueli, Bluewhite’s tech works year-round from sprays and harvesting to disking and seeding. By retrofitting existing infrastructure with intelligent autonomous algorithms, the robot tractors, says the company, improve farm productivity, precision, and worker safety. Additionally, the Blue White Robotics platform collects and distributes data that creates new services to increase yields and reduce inputs for the growing autonomous operation.
“Having already proven the commercial success of our solution with growers, this new round of funding will enable us to continue providing sustainable autonomous innovation to more markets and work with different types of partners across the ecosystem to impact every level of the food supply chain,” said Ben Alfi, co-founder and CEO of Bluewhite. “This next phase of our growth will help provide unprecedented transparency throughout the food supply chain and ensure healthier, safer, and more sustainable food production and consumption. We are thrilled to have forward-thinking investors and amazing customers who share our vision to make sustainable, autonomous farming a reality worldwide.”
