Israel’s SeeTree, an agriculturally-focused artificial intelligence (AI) startup, announced that it has launched a $15 million Series A round led by Hanaco Ventures, and including Canann Partners Israel, Uri Levine, venture capital firm Mindset, and iAngel.
Founded in Tel Aviv in 2017 by co-founders Israel Talpaz, Barak Hachamov, and Guy Morgenstern, and with offices in California and Brazil, SeeTree offers end-to-end services to farmers of permanent tree crops that enable them to manage and optimize both their stock health and output.
With an initial focus on citrus orchards, SeeTree has been building a presence in the sector, gathering high resolution multi-dimensional imagery on either single trees or tree clusters via drones; data through ground sensors; and by samples gathered through boots-on-the-ground. Together with the integration of AI technology and machine learning, SeeTree’s platform is able to hone its abilities to offer precise data.
“As you all know, AI disrupted numerous industries, but has fallen short on agriculture as a stand-alone optimization solution,” noted SeeTree CEO Israel Talpaz. “The quality of data received would be too limited to have a substantial impact on farming. With this in mind, my co-founders Barak Hachamov, Guy Morgenstern and I teamed up to create a multidisciplinary solution that would help growers truly know their trees.”
With this new funding, which followed approximately a year and three months after the company raised a $3.2 million Seed Round in September 2017, SeeTree is emerging from what it calls “stealth mode” to further develop its technology in regard to citrus orchards, and to eventually expand its services to include other high-value permanent crops such as nuts, while also expanding its geographical footprint.
“SeeTree’s rare combination of agronomy expertise and AI prowess poise the company for success.” said Pasha Romanovski, who led Hanaco Ventures’ investment, and who will be joining the SeeTree board of directors. “SeeTree’s focus on creating the largest collection of labeled data of permanent crops will enable them to build multiple products to help farmers succeed.”
Initially using drone technology and AI, SeeTree is able to create an identity for each tree in an operation. Then using ground level sensors, can zone in to find the source of a production problem.
“We combined AI with boots-on-the-ground to provide growers with visibility, monitoring, and actionable analytics to optimize their farming,” said Talpaz. “SeeTree uses the power of machine learning algorithms to get smarter, and offers the most precise window into the strength of trees.
SeeTree even digitizes each individual tree, and creates health and productivity files for each of them. In many ways, it can be seen as a social network for trees – since they each have profiles and status updates.”
With this knowledge, farmers can decide to replace certain trees that are diseased or underperforming, can materialize an informed harvesting plan, and can use the data gained to better decide on irrigation and use of inputs.
“Traditionally, farmers made large-scale business decisions based on intuitions that would come from limited (and often unreliable) small-scale testing done by the naked eye,” said Talpaz. “With SeeTree, farmers can now make critical decisions based on accurate and consistent small and large-scale data, connecting their actions to actual results in the field.”
-Lynda Kiernan