Led · Equity · Oct 2023

FarmSense’s core offering is its patented FlightSensor™, a field-deployed device that automatically counts and classifies insects in real time, giving growers actionable data on pest pressure. By replacing manual scouting with continuous digital monitoring, the platform enables farmers to optimize pesticide applications, lower input costs, and protect yields. The company, led by CEO Dr. Leslie Hickle, targets broad row-crop, specialty-crop, and orchard markets where timely pest insights can materially improve profitability. FarmSense was named a 2023 winner of the Radicle Inclusion Challenge, a competition focused on startups owned or operated by under-represented founders in agriculture. As a winner, it secured a $750,000 investment and access to Radicle Growth and Nutrien’s global networks and mentorship. These resources are expected to accelerate commercialization and expand the FlightSensor™ footprint in international markets.

Led · Equity · Oct 2022

Agtools provides a SaaS platform delivering business-critical, real-time market intelligence for more than 500 specialty crops. Its analytics surface indicators such as crop volumes, weather, pricing, exchange rates, logistical costs, market disruptors and macroeconomic factors to help producers and buyers optimize decisions. The analytics are built from three decades of historical statistics, more than 6.1 billion data points and over 50 years of global weather patterns, processed through patented machine-learning methods at up to one billion transactions per second. Customers include large and small produce retailers, farmers and fresh-produce wholesalers who receive tailored information from a single platform. The company has been described as the Bloomberg and Reuters of the food industry. Reinventure Capital invested as lead investor in Agtools' Series Seed-2 financing. AgTools operates a SaaS-based data platform for commodities that delivers volume and price insights to growers, shippers, traders and buyers. The company positions its product to help farmers understand global market variables that affect local decision-making beyond yield and cost metrics. As a winner of the Radicle Inclusion Challenge, AgTools will gain access to Radicle Growth’s company-building platform and a network of industry mentors. The investment and strategic support are intended to accelerate customer adoption and scale the company’s market-intelligence capabilities. Financially, AgTools secured a USD $250,000 investment through the Challenge. The company and its team will also benefit from exposure to Nutrien and Radicle Growth senior leadership and partners. Agtools is a B2B SaaS platform that consolidates complex agriculture and market data into a single dashboard. The company serves farmers, shippers, freight companies, and retailers, supplying data designed to increase profitability and reduce food waste. Agtools uses proprietary technology to streamline and present fragmented market and agricultural datasets in an all‑in‑one interface. The article reports an investment in Agtools by Ideaship. Ideaship is described as a patent‑leveraged venture capital firm that provides patent development support to early‑stage startups. No operating metrics or financial details are provided in the article.

Participated · Series B · Nov 2018

Taranis provides an AI-powered crop intelligence platform that leverages leaf-level imagery and machine learning to deliver full-service, leaf-level data capture for growers and ag advisors. Its models are trained on a dataset of over 200 million AI-data points. Since starting in 2015, Taranis has worked with top agricultural retailers and crop protection companies, serving millions of acres across the United States, Brazil, and Europe. Led by CEO Bar Veinstein and President Ofir Schlam, the platform helps ag advisors demonstrate value to growers, accelerate decision making, simplify management, and improve growers' bottom lines. The company raised $40M in a Series D that brought total funding to $100M. Taranis plans to use the funds to accelerate growth, expand globally, and invest in technologies to make the agri-carbon market a reality for growers. Taranis provides aerial imaging and analytics to deliver leaf-level pest diagnosis and customized prescription plans via its AI2 SmartScout Solutions. Its platform leverages a database of more than 1 million threat species and combines drone and plane imagery with satellite feeds to create high-resolution (0.3 millimeter pixel) maps. The company says it can cover 100 acres in six minutes and produce diagnoses 20 times faster than manual scouting with 20 times more data points. About 80% of clients currently use Taranis contractors rather than operate their own equipment. Planned uses of funding include improving diagnostic accuracy and comprehensiveness, identifying new pests and weeds across more crops, and geographic expansion across the Americas and into Asia-Pacific markets. Taranis intends to integrate its data with partners and equipment providers rather than move into spraying itself. Taranis provides aerial scouting and deep-learning software that analyzes high-resolution images captured by high-speed drones or manned aircraft to identify insect damage, nutrient deficiencies, diseases and other crop issues. Its platform delivers magnified images detailed enough for users to see which pests are affecting plants. The software targets commodity crops including corn, cotton, wheat, soybean, sugarcane and potatoes. Taranis says its technology is currently used by farms in Argentina, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine and the United States. The company plans to expand into more countries with the new funding, explicitly including Australia. Founded in 2015 by Ofir Schlam, Asaf Horvitz, Eli Bukchin and Ayal Karmi, the company combines hardware (aerial imaging) and AI to streamline traditional, labor-intensive crop monitoring. Taranis offers a precision agriculture intelligence platform that combines deep learning with proprietary datasets including sub-mm aerial imagery, field sensors, satellite imagery, weather forecasts and data from its field scouting app. The solution helps farmers monitor fields, make informed decisions and act to prevent losses from crop disease and pests. Led by CEO Ofir Schlam, the company is focused on scaling its pest and disease prediction platform and expanding its global reach. Taranis has subsidiaries in Argentina and Brazil and is establishing a U.S. office while expanding into India and Russia. The company has raised $9.5M in total funding to date and intends to use the new proceeds to accelerate platform growth and international expansion. Taranis builds crop-disease prediction software that combines public weather services, satellite imagery, and a proprietary high-resolution weather forecast model to detect micro weather conditions. It layers a localized model with local public data and deploys weather stations roughly every two miles on farms that lack them, and can integrate with farms' existing stations or cover station costs for full-service customers over more than 1,000 acres. The company offers a SmartScout app that integrates predictions and sends messages and chat notifications to farmers' networks of service providers to help prioritize farm visits. Taranis focuses on predicting disease before crop impact—for example detecting infection periods for fire blight—and aims to reduce spray loads and increase yields. The service is priced at $3 per acre with no user limits. Go-to-market efforts target Brazil, Argentina and the U.S., prioritizing soybeans, corn and cotton, though the product can be used for other crops. With proceeds from its seed round, the company is expanding its team from four co‑founders (who self-funded the startup's first 18 months) to about 10 staff including developers, meteorologists, agronomists and sales.