By Lynda Kiernan
New York-based indoor agricultural tech startup Agrilyst has rebranded as Artemis, and has announced a successful $8 million Series A co-led by Astanor Ventures and Talis Capital. The round also included existing investors Empire State Development Fund and iSelect Fund.
This round has now brought the company’s total funding to $11.75 million to date.
Over the time since its launch by Allison Kopf in Brooklyn in 2015, Artemis has expanded its business, posting 500 percent growth between 2016 and 2018 to reach $5 million in revenue, and growing into a one-shop software platform for large-scale indoor agriculture operations. Offering management tools that allow users to manage workflow and daily tasks, register crop batches, trace food safety issues, manage their workforce, growers can leverage data insights that can lead to increased efficiency, profits, and growth.
Artemis’ Cultivation Management Platform (CMP) can give its users a singular picture of all aspects of their indoor ag business, and has the ability to easily integrate with outside software for climate control, logistics, accounting, and point of sale commerce.
“We believe the open exchange of data between systems is critical for farm success and have always been committed to helping farmers access and utilize their data in better ways,” said Kopf in 2017.
As the company broadened its approach to the industry, its team realized the value in being able to serve the legal cannabis industry, and began integrating some regulatory compliance abilities into its CMP, creating a platform that can facilitate the cultivation of 800 crops across 10 countries including vegetables, fruit, flowers, and hemp and legal marijuana.
“The Artemis team has built an incredible solution that’s already captured the attention of some of the largest farming companies in the world,” said Matus Maar, co-founder and managing partner at Talis Capital. “There is a clear opportunity in the agtech space with these types of innovators.”
In addition to announcing its Series A, the company has announced a rebranding entailing a change of name to Artemis, the launch of a new website, and corporate branding that will be initiated in June.
Leadership changes were also announced, with the appointment of Dr. Kathleen Merrigan, the former Deputy Secretary of Agriculture under President Obama and the first Executive Director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University; and Charlie O’Donnell, the sole partner and founder at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, to the company’s Board of Directors.
“We started Artemis with a mission to help indoor farmers and greenhouse operators better manage their operations,” said Allison Kopf, founder and CEO of Artemis. “This investment coupled with the guidance and deep expertise of Kathleen and Charlie will take our vision, product, and service to the next level-accelerating our ability to enable enterprise-level horticulture businesses to profit and grow.”
A New Class
It was not too long ago that vertical farming was viewed as not being an investable asset class. However, since 1982, 24 million acres of U.S. farmland have been lost to development, and the loss continues at a rate of 40 acres of farm and ranch land every hour, according to the American Farmland Trust. More specifically, the California Climate & Agriculture Network states that California, one of the top-producing agricultural states in the country, has lost an average of 50,000 acres of farmland each year for the past 30 years due to urbanization and development.
It is the ability of indoor farming to meet and alleviate these challenges that is driving the market to be expected to exceed a value of US$6 billion by 2022. And as the industry scales up and proves out how it can answer multiple challenges posed by traditional agricultural production from traditional long transport systems, to food waste, to water conservation, to food contamination, to growing food in urban food deserts, there has also been an emergence of agtech startups offering software platforms in support of these businesses.
In January of this year two such startups made industry announcements. Canada-based agtech startup INNO-3B announced it raised C$6 million (US$4.5 million) in seed funding through a round led by Ecofuel Fund. Additional backers include Desjardins Capital, the Fonds de Solidarité FTQ, Premier Tech, Fonds de Solidarité FTQ Bas Saint-Laurent, and Investissement Québec and the Ministère de l’Économie et de l’Innovation.
Headquartered in Quebec and Ontario, INNO-3B designs and manufactures innovative robotic solution platforms for the indoor vertical production of high-density crops. The company offers fully automated, scalable, remotely monitored, and controlled growing systems that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated from ag production. Its systems can be established in any location, whether it be urban or rural, and the company also offers deep agronomic knowledge and support through its in-house agronomic expertise.
Within weeks, Montreal-based AI agtech startup MotorLeaf announced the launch of a strategic partnership with Greenhouse supplier Cultilene to facilitate greater access to artificial intelligence for growers facing tight margins and labor shortages. Together, the companies announced a global expansion campaign to connect large-scale growers of hydroponic tomatoes and peppers with AI-automation services.
~ Lynda Kiernan