Weather analytics and network company Understory has raised $7.5 million in additional funding through a round led by 4490 Ventures. Joining the round as a new investor is Washington DC-based Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, a vehicle founded by Steve Case, former CEO of AOL, with the intent of investing in seed stage companies located outside of Silicon Valley, New York, and Boston.
This is a return investment for 4490 Ventures, having led a previous $7.5 million investment in Understory in 2016, after the company relocated to Madison, Wisconsin from Somerville, Massachusetts.
Founded in 2012, Understory has deployed more than 500 solar-powered weather stations at points throughout five major U.S. metropolitan regions. Using patented technology, the stations – which can be placed directly in a field – monitor conditions including temperature, pressure, precipitation, wind, and humidity in real time and at ground-level, creating data sets that offer actionable information on a granular level, the likes of which satellites, radar, and other technologies cannot provide.
In March of this year, the company announced an international expansion and the successful beginning of a strategic partnership with Monsanto (now Bayer), which agreed to use Understory’s technology and weather network to monitor localized weather conditions as well as evapotranspiration, and growing degree units, or at what point a plant is in its growing cycle, in Argentina. This information can help farmers make better decisions about irrigation or to determine the optimum harvest time or dates.
“Understory provides the only technology necessary to make hyper-local weather valuable for operations management in agricultural areas where local weather information is not accurate,” said Giovanni Piccinni, Global Supply Chain Field Optimization Lead with Monsanto, at the time. “With localized accurate data, growers can streamline operational challenges and boost economic outcomes. We anticipate this being an important and valuable partnership.”
The unpredictability and significant financial consequences of the weather have made the development and commercialization of technologies and platforms such as Understory’s an important goal for the agricultural sector. And after years of development, Understory plans to expand its number of weather stations from the current 500 to 5,000 by the end of 2019.
“It has taken a number of years and a lot of dedication from our team, but Understory is now positioned to truly enable a fundamental shift in how the insurance and agriculture industries utilize data to make informed weather-related decisions,” said Alex Kubicek, co-founder and CEO, Understory.
The company plans to use the funds from this latest round to support its expansion in the global agricultural market beyond the U.S. and Argentina.
“This funding represents another step forward towards realizing our goal of disrupting the status quo when it comes to weather analysis,” said Kubicek.
“Understory represents innovation at its finest,” said Greg Robinson, managing director at 4490 Ventures. “The technology developed by Understory has real potential to redefine multi-billion dollar markets while empowering environmental efficiencies that impact our global food supply. That’s a winning combination we are proud to be investing in over the long-term.”
-Lynda Kiernan