August 24, 2017

iUNU, a Seattle-based startup that develops computer-based artificial intelligence applications for the greenhouse and indoor farming industries, announced it has raised $6 million through a round that included 2nd Avenue Partners; Initialized Capital – the firm launched by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian; Liquid 2 Ventures, which was founded by NFL great Joe Montana; Fuel Capital, and others.

Founded in 2013, initially as a plasma lighting business, iUNU’s platform can provide real time imagery for every plant in a facility, enabling a grower to monitor for subtle changes in color or health indicators of their crop, as well as enabling the automation of what were once manual tasks associated with indoor food production.

“This solution turns greenhouses into data driven manufacturing plants. It is both a seriously practical and crucial commercial application of AI to a fundamental industry,” said Alexis Ohanian of Initialized Capital.

After a three year period of development and trials, the company just widely released its first product, LUNA – a system that includes internet linked cameras and moving sensors that scan a greenhouse operation from tracks, collecting data and notifying farmers if attention is needed.

GeekWire reports that the iUNU team refer to their LUNA platform as “she”, saying she “begins to learn, and remember, the moment her cameras and sensors are first installed…giving growers historical records of every detail of every plant in the system, as well as live information.”

“When we saw how differentiated LUNA is from the other solutions in this space, we knew we had to invest in iUNU,” said Liquid 2 Ventures in a statement (from Joe Montana, Mike Miller, and Michael Ma). “LUNA provides a truly comprehensive understanding of each plant’s health and growth, focused on the plant’s actual performance, not just the environment around it. Closing the control loop has the potential to change the equation of the economics of commercial-scale, indoor horticulture.”

Greenhouse square footage is expanding by 20 percent per year, according to a statement by Initialized Capital, as climate change and pollution continue to negatively affect the area of viable and fertile farmland left to us. Meanwhile, U.S. producers see losses of up to 20 percent of fruits and vegetables in the field, while still being pushed by retailers to deliver uniform and consistent produce in a reliable manner.

“We have built a customer focused, plant-first solution with LUNA that does more than just improve a grower’s reaction time to problems,” said Adam Greenberg, CEO of iUNU. “We reject the premise that ‘reactive mode’ is the natural state for growers. With the right technology, thoughtfully applied, we can give them better computer driven visibility, greenhouse operations can be as precise, proactive, and predictable as modern manufacturing. We are empowering growers to see and control more.”

Outlining the factors that drove Initialized Capital to back iUNU, Ohanian states that the startup has “deep moats for an enormous market… selling high-margin software that is difficult to get right and then have a data advantage for computer vision that grows with every customer and plant varietal they on-board.”

-Lynda Kiernan

Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.