January 12, 2021

By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

Founded in Nairobi, Kenya, and with offices in both Nairobi and New York, Gro Intelligence announced it has raised $85 million through a Series B co-led by Intel Capital, Africa Internet Ventures (a strategic partnership between TPG Growth and EchoVC), and the family offices of Ronald Lauder and Eric Zinterhofer. 

Through its partnership with EchoVC, TPG Growth also led Gro Intelligence’s Series A-2 in 2017.

“Gro Intelligence is reimagining how data can be used in global agriculture,” said Sara Menker, CEO and founder of Gro Intelligence, in 2017. “Agricultural data is complex and messy, historically requiring teams of analysts and huge amounts of time to sort and process. Our product solves this problem and simultaneously opens up a level of analysis previously unavailable to entire sections of the agriculture supply chain. Gro offers unparalleled insights and predictive analytics for our customers. We want to be a leader in the $5 trillion global agricultural industry.”

Today, Yemi Lalude, managing partner, TPG Africa, said, “Gro Intelligence has had a remarkable journey so far and demonstrates the growing importance of AI in driving a more sustainable food supply. TPG Growth is proud to have supported the company from its beginnings in Nairobi to the forefront of today’s efforts to make companies and institutions across multiple industries around the world more resilient to climate change and climate risk.”

The round was also joined by existing investors DCVC and GGV Capital, and new investors Schusterman Family Investments, Dick Parsons, Rethink Food, and additional unnamed family offices.

“Gro Intelligence is one of the most exciting AI companies and is tackling two of the world’s biggest challenges: food security and climate risk,” said Trina Van Pelt, senior managing director, Intel Capital. “Their software-based platform will drive compute-powered, cross-border knowledge to surface meaningful insights and enable better informed agricultural decisions.”

“We are excited to co-lead this investment round because Gro Intelligence’s technology aligns with our mission of unleashing the power of data to improve the world.”

Global agricultural and food production systems are faced with challenges on multiple fronts, acknowledged the company, that notes on its website that there is a small window of opportunity to develop smart solutions to climate change, population growth, and a lack of sustainability in production and consumption. 

The development of these solutions will depend on a vast array of data and predictive modeling, however, the fragmentation and siloing of data has been an issue to overcome.

As an answer, Gro Intelligence’s cutting-edge, AI-driven platform harvests disparate data, coalescing it into usable insight, creating visualizations, and generating forecasts to enable Gro Intelligence users in the food, agriculture, and climate economies to better understand the multiple factors working at play within and against supply and demand scenarios in agricultural markets.

“Food security and climate risk represent existential global-sized opportunities for our AI-powered decisions and insights platform,” said Menker. “We see a tremendous need for the market knowledge provided by the Gro Platform.”

“Our customers have come to rely on Gro as a unique source of actionable data-driven insights about our food supply and models to measure and manage associated climate change risk to physical and financial assets across the globe. We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new investors and continue to be grateful to our existing investors for their support.”

Beyond the gathering and synthesizing of data, using analytical tools and predictive models, Gro Intelligence is also able to combine machine learning and domain expertise to generate unprecedented future insights into the global food and ag industry. And with the capital from this most recent Series C, the company is planning to accelerate the growth and global adoption of its technology, to enhance its platform’s machine learning capabilities, and to deliver localized insights on food, agriculture, and climate risk.

 
– Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.