附近上门

aims to observe a crop鈥檚 development as it grows and help farmers determine when the crop needs the basics, such as more light, water, or nutrients.

Subscribe to the 附近上门 Daily

Buoyed by a $20 million Series B round of funding, the San Francisco-based company enables farmers to digitize and optimize their decisions by providing data on how weather and other factors affect yield, quality and harvest timing.

It measures everything of importance to crops–weather, soil and even the plant itself–using a set of spectral and thermal sensors that point down at the plants, , CEO of Arable, told 附近上门 News. Ethington joined the company as CEO in 2018 and has worked at the intersection of agriculture and technology for the past 12 years.

The round was led by and includes new participation by M20, and Tridon, as well as investment from Arable鈥檚 existing investors including , and . With the new investment, Arable has raised a total of $38 million since its inception in 2015, which includes a round in 2017 according to 附近上门 data.

Arable is putting the new funding to work on its global expansion and on continued innovation, Ethington said. The company has already made an investment in Brazil, an important component of the food system that is in need of good technology, he added.

鈥淭here are a lot of farmers and land, but not enough tools to support them,鈥� Ethington said. 鈥淩ight now, we have an office in Brazil and want to expand that. Asia is next on the horizon.鈥�

As part of the investment, , managing director at Prelude, is joining Arable鈥檚 board. He has been looking for four years to invest in a company that was digitizing agriculture in a way that was scalable and found it in Arable, he said.

鈥淎 number of companies are trying to do this in pieces and portions of agriculture,鈥� Cupta said in an interview. 鈥淚 had met Arable several times, but when I saw Jim at the helm, who has been able to scale a business in the space, it got me excited.

鈥淭hey are collecting a completely new data layer from fields that have never before been gathered with as much granularity and consistency,鈥� he added. 鈥淎ll of the breadth and depth is important to value creation, and that is why I led their Series B.鈥�

Meanwhile, 2020 was a big year of growth for the company. Arable experienced just over 300 percent in sales growth through the third quarter, driven by customer growth in new products.

It is also partnering with high-profile players and startups in agriculture and food, including , and .

鈥淭he pandemic exposed how fragile the food system is,鈥� Ethington said. 鈥淔armers want to get more data about what feeds into their business and are more eager than ever to learn what is happening in the product of food.鈥�

Illustration: