Sentera, a company that focuses on drone technology dedicated for farm management and agriculture, has secured $14 million in a Series A funding round. The investments came from a multitude of sources; a mix of food, biosciences and agriculture investment firms from around the Midwest and East Coast. These key investors include Chicago-based S2G Ventures, New York-based Continental Grain Company, and Washington, D.C.-based Middleland Capital.
The injection of capital will allow Minneapolis-based Sentera to continue to accelerate commercialization and growth of its revenue and customer base. Commenting on that, the CEO of Sentera, Eric Tiapale, summarizing his ambition for the products to be developed with the newly raised funds, stated, “We’ve built a very powerful capability, but we’ve also been intensely focused on building a product that is easy to use and incorporate into existing workflows. That’s helped us establish confidence and trust with our customers. We’ve demonstrated how real-time sensing and analytics can improve economic outcomes and support sustainability initiatives. This investment allows us to ramp so we can take these digital products to scale more quickly, alongside the growers, advisors and enterprise partners who’ve helped us to develop and refine our products.”
A company capable of raising $14 million must be sophisticated, proven their abilities in their field, and Sentera has proven themselves. Their sophisticated, economically selected sensors and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) technology help them diagnose and inspect plants, studying their diseases, nutrition, yield and growth very effectively. Deep learning and computer vision algorithms integrate with mobile, sensor and cloud components to deliver conveniently comprehensible insights to growers, agronomists and operators.
The investors clearly express their confidence in Sentera, “We invest in teams that share our vision in building a food system designed for the 21st century and beyond. We are incredibly excited about Sentera’s people, their core technology and their commercial success. Sentera’s products have had very positive user feedback. The company can demonstrate that they improve customer profitability and that their technologies support new practices that drive greater efficiency while reducing environmental impact,” a statement made by Sanjeev Krishnan, managing director at S2G Ventures which happens to be one of Sentera’s core investors that helped them raise the funds.