August 13, 2024

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

Seattle-based agtech startup Terrantic, which is digitizing the ag supply chain, has secured $3.5 million in a seed round that was oversubscribed. Led by Supply Change Capital, the round extended other backers including York IE and Vitalize VC as well as Array Ventures, the latter of which is an existing investor. Terrantic, which specializes in supply chain data, will direct the proceeds toward advancing its mission to help growers and producers slash food waste while bolstering yields by enhancing supply chain operations, resulting in better quality products from farm to table. According to Crunchbase, Terrantic has raised a combined $5.3 million since its founding in 2022.

Much of the ag industry has embraced the data to which emerging technologies lend themselves. However, there’s also a growing disconnect among stakeholders — including growers — when attempting to harness disjointed data to optimize yields, throughput and quality. Terrantic helps growers, packers and food processors to increase margins by improving the data they collect from various modes, such as drones, mobile devices, etc., adding greater context to the data to make it more meaningful and actionable.

The company’s solution involves an AI-powered contextualization engine that takes the form of an end-to-end operational decision-making platform designed for high-variability food environments. The engine behaves as a process operations copilot for food processing companies and growers, with the aim of reducing food waste, a major issue costing the ag industry both time and money. Growers gain a view into performance insights at the lot and field level, while producers gain insight into better production line layouts and storage plans.

Terrantic Co-Founder and CEO Krishna Srinivasan stated, “Our technology is the nerve center that provides food processors with the end-to-end visibility and contextual execution they need to connect the food supply chain. Our technology is the foundational operating system that has helped food processing companies increase shelf life by 20 percent and production throughput by 40 percent, and we are just getting started. Investments in improving our technology and sales engine will help us reach and change the operations of many more companies in the future.”

Among the users of Terrantic’s AI-driven contextualization engine include Columbia Fruit, Servico, Valicoff Family Farms and the University of California Merced, among others.

Terrantic Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer Trevor Cox explained, “Our goal is for food processing companies to never have to review a business intelligence report or pay for data professional services again. We are proud to be at the forefront of this emerging market and look forward to using this funding to help more food processing companies become more productive.”

The oversubscribed nature of Terrantic’s seed round bodes well for the broader agtech startup community, where funding has been harder to come by of late. According to McKinsey, VC funding to agtech startups sank by 30 percent in 2023, owing to a host of headwinds that caused a wider 50 percent downturn in VC funding across sectors of the economy during the period. In a challenging macroeconomic environment, institutional investor criteria for backing agtech startups have shifted from a focus on growth to one on positive cash flow to offset risks.

Supply Change Capital Managing Partner Noramay Cadena stated, “An optimized and data-informed supply chain is critical to enabling a sustainable food system. Operational efficiency and data insights within the supply chain – from food processing to agriculture to process manufacturing – are the keys. We are proud to be investing in Terrantic, whose technology will modernize operations for the industry and improve food system sustainability.”

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