Participated · Grant · Oct 2021

BeeHero provides a subscription Precision Pollination as a Service (PPaaS) that deploys proprietary in-hive and in-field sensors to collect audio and biological data, analyzed with machine learning to deliver actionable insights to growers and beekeepers. The platform enables growers to optimize crop yields and quality by monitoring pollination effectiveness and offers beekeepers visibility into hive health. BeeHero manages over 200,000 hives across five continents and records 10 million signals daily. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in California with R&D in Tel Aviv and employs about 60 people. Financially, BeeHero has reported revenue growth of over 270% year-over-year for the past three years and surpassed $44 million ARR in 2023; it has attracted $64 million in funding to date and receives grants from the Israel Innovation Authority, EU Horizon 2020, BIRD and others. Future plans cited include premium beekeeper solutions such as insurance and working capital, and bee-pollinated commodities price-risk hedging products based on its data. BeeHero offers a Precision-Pollination-as-a-Service platform that uses advanced data analytics, machine learning, and low-cost IoT sensors to bring transparency and efficiency to commercial crop pollination. The company has built what it describes as the world’s largest bee and pollination dataset to optimize pollination and improve crop yields. BeeHero enables commercial beekeepers to remotely track and monitor apiaries and provides growers with real-time insights to support decision-making. The company reports close to 100 thousand acres of high-value crops currently pollinated with its service and has begun expansion into Australia, Europe, South Africa, and South America. BeeHero plans to integrate new platform tools for an even more accurate, real-time view of crop development and is increasing investment in R&D. To date the company has raised $64M and intends to use new funding to accelerate growth and adoption of its Sustainable Agriculture Ecosystem. BeeHero equips honeybee hives with IoT sensors and analytics to track bee movements and health in near real time, enabling early detection of issues like mite infestations. Its platform aims to increase crop yields and hive health while reducing labor by replacing infrequent manual hive checks. BeeHero works with several top almond growers in California and expects to manage 100,000 hives by year-end, aiming to become the largest pollination provider in the U.S. (it is currently the fourth largest). The company plans to expand beyond almonds and the U.S. into berries, avocados, apples, sunflower, soybeans and greenhouse crops like tomatoes, with Australia and Europe on the roadmap depending on partnerships. BeeHero is building a large bee-activity database and has research partnerships with the World Bee Project and Japan’s Ministry of Culture. Financially, BeeHero recently raised a $15 million Series A and won $4 million in grants to fund scaling and international expansion. BeeHero equips honeybee hives with off-the-shelf sensors (temperature, humidity, sound, accelerometer), pollen traps, and computer vision to monitor colony health and pollination efficiency and surface insights via an online dashboard. The platform provides early warnings for issues like mite infestations and aims to reduce colony collapse by delivering actionable insights (e.g., queen stress, pollination quality) rather than raw data. The company reports testing on nearly 20,000 hives and cites yield improvements of 30–35% in soybeans and 70–100% in apples and cashews in South America, as well as mortality reductions of 20–25% in some cases. BeeHero positions its service as “pollination as a service” for large-scale agriculture and is focused on expanding operations into the U.S., targeting high-adoption precision-agriculture segments such as California almonds. It emphasizes low-cost, robust hardware and ongoing R&D, exploring additional crops, improved metrics, and partnerships with universities to apply hive data in academic studies. The company has completed a $4M seed financing to support expansion and continued product development.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2020

AgroScout builds an AI-based crop management platform that uses five layers of datapoints to generate analytics and actionable crop management plans. The platform monitors pests and diseases to help reduce pesticide use and includes sustainability and carbon-accountability tools. AgroScout relies on low-cost data collection and stable off-the-shelf hardware, which the company says simplifies deployment for growers. Its product offers improved yield predictions prior to harvest for farmers, agribusinesses, and food manufacturers. Founded in 2017, the company raised $7.5 million in a Series A this round and has now raised just shy of $11 million in total. AgroScout plans to expand its remote agronomy services and bring its technology to an estimated 500 million mostly underserved farms worldwide. AgroScout provides a solution that integrates external data collected by drones and smartphones with AI software, deep learning and computer vision to accurately and autonomously detect, identify and monitor diseases, pests and other agronomic problems in field crops. The system leverages off-the-shelf, low-cost equipment and is based on user-generated content. The company is a portfolio company of The Trendlines Group and is led by CEO Simcha Shore. Pilot projects are underway in Latin America with PepsiCo and its growers, and commercial sales have begun in the United States, Latin America and Israel. AgroScout is a member of Oracle for Startups and an early adopter of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Data Science. It intends to use the new funding to expand market reach and broaden services to customers.

Led · Equity · Oct 2017

Mantaro Networks is developing Unmanned Search and Rescue Systems (USRS) in partnership with Beeper Communications to fill capability gaps identified by Homeland Security. The joint project focuses on autonomous operation of robotic unmanned devices, distributed-decentralised command-and-control algorithms, and a resilient broadband communications infrastructure to transfer high-bandwidth, media-rich data. The effort aims to produce a detailed Common Operational Picture (COP) to enable data sharing and eliminate interoperability challenges among responding agencies. Mantaro has demonstrated a fully functional UGV operable using Beeper’s cellular bonder as the sole network communication, allowing beyond-line-of-sight remote operation. The companies have a commercial agreement with Safety Dynamics to integrate gunshot-detection and sensor analytics into the UGV platform. Testing and development will involve existing Safety Dynamics customers and interested police departments, including Baltimore and Houston.