New funding, new hires: Pollen Systems, a Seattle-area ag-tech startup, has raised $2.4 million in new capital and hired nine new employees, including sales directors for Spain and Peru as well as Singapore and Southeast Asia.
The company, which launched in 2017, employs artificial intelligence to aid farmers of high-value crops including apples, avocados, blueberries, cannabis, cherries, citrus fruit, nuts, raspberries, rice, soybeans and wine grapes.
The new cash puts the company’s value at $24 million, according to a Pollen Systems quarterly newsletter.
The tech: Pollen Systems deploys drones to collect aerial imagery and provide data down to the level of individual plants and trees. Their platform uses visual AI to assess crop health.
The company offers a management plan tailored to different crops. For wine grapes, for example, Pollen Systems provides information on irrigation needs throughout a growing season, monitors for pests and heat stress, and predicts the harvest yield, among other services.
Expanding market: The startup operates in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Chile and Spain. It has a target of expanding into 10 new countries this year, which are expected to include the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Rwanda.
The strategy includes creating new local subsidiaries abroad and expanding into new sectors such as the paper industry, sugarcane and coffee.
Competitors in the space include SemiosBio Tech in nearby Vancouver, B.C., as well as Ceres Imaging and Taranis.
Keith McCall, a former Microsoft exec, is the founder and CEO of the company.
