Gardin builds an optical photosynthesis sensor combined with AI to measure crop photosynthesis in real time, providing growers early insight into plant health and development. The system is deployed across more than 20 crop species, from algae to tomatoes. Led by CEO and founder Sumanta Talukdar, the company is based in Oxford, UK. Gardin plans to use the new funding to enhance its platform and expand its commercial team to grow its customer base across continents. The article reports a $4.5M Seed 2 financing, which represents the company’s latest outside funding. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article. Gardin combines remote optical sensors with machine learning to provide growers detailed, non-destructive measurements of individual-plant physiological performance. Its sensors can detect growth anomalies such as underwatering days earlier than expert agronomists, enabling faster corrective action. The product targets controlled-environment agriculture — greenhouses and indoor/vertical farms — where light and temperature can be regulated. Gardin plans to expand its product lineup with crop forecasting and nutritional density mapping, ramp up production capabilities, and continue marketing across Europe and North America. The company has seen strong interest from the sector and reports a steady sales pipeline. Since launching in 2020, Gardin has raised a total of $12 million, including the recent seed round. Gardin develops optical phenotyping hardware and accompanying analytics software to measure and monitor nutritional value of food across the supply chain. The company uses multispectral data fusion, remote sensing and computer vision to capture biochemical signatures and quantify plant physiology and compound density with high fidelity. Its full‑stack product is designed to run like an OS in the background, integrate with existing producer architectures, and optimise growing environments to lower costs, reduce carbon footprint and cut waste. Gardin targets both traditional agriculture and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and aims to become a new food‑production gold standard. The startup has partnered with crop and plant physiologists and phenotyping experts to identify key biochemical mechanisms for different crops. Gardin has secured pilot trials with supermarket chains, food producers and vertical farms that are ready to go live early this year, and recently raised external pre‑seed funding.

Total raised

$17M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

May 2025