hexafarms, a pioneer in agricultural tech leveraging AI to optimize greenhouses to power the future of food production, announced the successful close of a € 1.3 million pre-seed funding round led by leading European early-stage investors Speedinvest with participation from Mudcake and techstars. With this fresh capital, hexafarms will further develop its AI and machine learning capabilities as well as expand its team of research and development experts.
This fresh round of funding, which brings the total capital raised by hexafarm to over €2.5 million, will enable hexafarms to continue to invest in its AI and machine learning capabilities, increasing the accuracy of predictions, as well as growing the company’s portfolio of crops. hexafarms currently has the widest portfolio across Europe based on public information of supported crops and cultivars and is currently processing an estimated 9 million kilos of strawberries and tomatoes for this quarter.
David Ahmed, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, said: “Although the global agriculture industry plays a fundamental role on a vast scale, it’s dishearteningly under-optimized. Our mission is to revolutionize this landscape. With our constantly evolving AI models, we aim to unlock potential savings of nearly 30% in variable costs and losses. By harnessing the power of algorithms, we can cater to the individual needs of each plant at any scale, surpassing the capabilities of human intervention.“
The global food production ecosystem is currently facing a significant challenge, with 14% of food produced lost between harvest and retail[1], and approximately 10-30%[2][3] between seed to harvesting, exacerbating food insecurity and global hunger. To address this issue, a streamlined approach to food production in indoor spaces, including greenhouses, is essential, considering that approximately 55% of the fruits and vegetables consumed in cities in the West are cultivated indoors[4]. hexafarms is capitalizing on the opportunities presented by the controlled environment agriculture market, a market that is poised to reach a value of $100 billion by 2030[5], by optimizing crop production through AI models that reduce preventable losses.
hexafarms was born in 2021 out of a desire to address the inefficiencies in a food production process that relies on manual labour, a solution that is neither scalable nor sustainable. The company offers an AI-driven SaaS solution to facilitate optimized food production in commercial greenhouses, addressing a 30% loss in investments due to under-optimized production. Serving large-scale facilities, hexafarms leverages diverse data from hexafarms’ cameras and sensors to yield meaningful insights, enabling a 30% increase in seasonal harvest for high-end crops. The hexafarms app serves as the window into production by providing growers with accurate, tailored information regarding harvest time as well as highlighting issues that can be addressed to optimise plant biology in the production process. Amidst rising concerns over global food supply depletion, the company’s scalable solution combines plant biology expertise with AI models, offering a competitive edge over human expertise alone in the realm of commercial food production.
Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, Partner with Speedinvest’s Climate Tech & Industrial Tech investment team, commented: “The agricultural sector is in urgent need of innovative solutions to address the pressure from Climate change on commercial food production process and food insecurity. We have strong confidence in hexafarms and cannot wait to see them further develop their AI and machine learning capabilities and expand their team of experts. We are convinced that their app will transform commercial food production through optimisation and digitalisation.”
Anna Ottosson, Founding Partner at Mudcake, added: “Over 9 billion people will need healthy and nutritious food over the next decades. We can only achieve this by increasing the efficiency of our production systems. Using their unique AI-optimized software for commercial greenhouses, hexafarms will help ensure food security for current and future generations. We are proud to back them in that important mission.”
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/05/berlin-based-agtech-hexafarms-secures-e1-3-million-pre-seed-to-empower-commercial-indoor-farmers/
