FARM autonomy specialist SwarmFarm Robotics says it has raised A$12 million in funds to develop and grow the integrated autonomy category in agriculture through its SwarmBot platform and operating system SwarmConnect.
The company's Series A funding round was led by Emmertech, an AgTech fund from Conexus Venture Capital based in Canada, along with Tribe Global Ventures and Access Capital. Existing SwarmFarm investors including Tenacious Ventures, and GrainInnovate, the Grains Research and Development Corporation venture capital fund managed by Artesian, also joined the round.
SwarmFarm CEO Andrew Bate said there was enormous demand for autonomy in agriculture, but most equipment providers were focused on driverless tractors and robotic arms.
"We believe that farmers want more," Mr Bate said.
"They want a technology ecosystem built to address the issues in their locality, a farm-centric system that leaves the lowest possible footprint on their fields, helping them do more with less.
"They want integrated autonomy, so that's what we're building."
SwarmFarm announced last year that SwarmBots had been successfully deployed to farmers who covered more than 526,000 hectares, operated for 64,000 hours, and reduced pesticide inputs by an estimated 707 tonnes.
"While many companies are making driverless tractors and developing niche robotics solutions, we believe that there is a third category of autonomy that combines the robot and the application within a development framework that will allow farmers to customise their equipment for their needs and allow developers to bring their innovations to life much more rapidly," Mr Bate said.
"It's the best of both worlds.
"For the farmer, we provide customised autonomy in a box. For the developer, we provide a streamlined path to the grower with a tight feedback loop."
Emmertech managing director Sean O'Connor said there was a future where SwarmBots would be found worldwide.
"The key trait that drove our eagerness to lead this round was the farmer-centric approach this team is built around and the truly exceptional results their robots have achieved," Mr O'Connor said.
"We met with several farmers who were putting upwards of 3000 hours a year on their SwarmBot, often leaving them out in the fields for over 24 hours at a time."
Mr Bate said SwarmFarm existed to solve a complex problem set many farmers were facing: how to grow better crops and the optimal amount of food on their land without putting down excessive amounts of chemicals or acquiring larger and larger equipment.
"We hit a point where we just said enough is enough," Mr Bate said.
"We saw our input costs increasing, our equipment costs rising as we bought larger equipment, our dependence on pesticides rising, and our yields declining despite it all.
"There was a day when we sat down and realised that this wasn't an equation that needed incremental change; we needed an entirely new farming system - and SwarmFarm was the solution."
SwarmFarm is also working with innovative farm equipment developers including WEED-IT, Bilberry, Weedseeker, Hayes Spraying, Rasmussen Brothers Engineering, Goldacres, and Croplands.
