‘Giving superhuman powers to farmers’: Napa AI firm raises $3 million
Summary
Scout, a Napa County-based farm management software company driven by AI that empowers growers to optimize quality, yield, and financial results, closed a deal for $3 million in seed funding from various investors.The company captures photos of vineyards at the ground level and uses artificial intelligence to analyze the photos and provide actionable data on the crops.Its like giving superhuman powers to farmers, Scout CEO Kia Behnia said. Our company is all about providing data and insights to help farmers farm better and smarter.David Schwab, founder and managing director of Vertical Venture Partners, said AI has the potential to transform many industries, including insurance, biotech, construction and agriculture. His Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm is leading the investment into Scout.Kia, Mason (Earles) and the founding team at Scout have direct, personal experience with the problem they are solving and understand the customers they are selling to, Schwab said. From retail shopping to financial services, they shared a common denominator by surfacing the most important data to decision-makers, it gave them an easy way to take action based on insights.Scout operates similarly but for farming. This translates to time series measurements and the ability to detect patterns that arent visible.Behnia, who uses Scout in his vineyard Neotempo, has accurately predicted his exact harvest date for the last three years straight, he said, with Scout analyzing 1.2 million images and identifying weak vines that were replanted last year.Scout has six paying customers to date some are big brand names, while others have large acreage counts.The company is growing its customer base, as well as its internal team, hiring talent directly from UC Davis.We hire the best enology and ag talent from Davis, as well as computer science and AI.