AgTech Funding and Investments

Monday June 3, 2024 — IntelliCulture, an equipment management software for specialty crops, has secured $3.5M in funding for accelerating its scaling in the market. The round, led by Serra Ventures, and backed by Emmertech and Tall Grass Ventures, represents a continued commitment to intentional capital in the agriculture sector to serve growers.

The investment will primarily be allocated towards growing the IntelliCulture team as expansions continue both within North America and internationally. In addition, continued R&D will drive further product evolution for areas of new development, accelerating critical product milestones on the company’s roadmap.

"Machine-learning engines for insights and recommendations let IntelliCulture do the number crunching for our farms in ways that historically have never been possible. The savings of our growers have been substantial already, and we can’t wait to drive even higher ROI through this investment", says Cole Powers, CEO of IntelliCulture.

Serra Ventures is a venture capital firm focusing on companies that have deep technology which solves industry specific problems. It is led by Managing Partners that are former venture-backed CEOs who understand the art as well as the science of building great companies. Tim Hoerr, CEO of Serra, joins the board of IntelliCulture as part of the transaction, and shared this regarding the investment in IntelliCulture: “We have known the IntelliCulture team for over three years, having first intersected when the company participated in the Illinois Ag Tech Accelerator in 2021. Since that time, IntelliCulture has made remarkable progress because they're delivering a powerful solution that solves real pain points in production agriculture. Customers are delighted, and for us as investors, that's the bottom line!”

Emmertech, one of Canada’s leading AgTech investment firms, has a differentiated focus on global AgTech opportunities. They invest in high-quality businesses developing novel technologies in their early and growth stages and led IntelliCulture’s first venture round. “The IntelliCulture team has differentiated itself with a relentless focus on both execution and grower ROI. Emmertech is proud to be a part of this exciting AgTech story and we look forward to a bright future for the Company.” says Kyle Scott, Managing Partner with Emmertech and a Director of the Company.

Tall Grass Ventures rounded out the fundraise and is a venture firm based in Canada that focuses on investing exclusively into the future of agriculture and food. They leverage deep industry knowledge and experience as well as passion for agriculture to augment their portfolio companies. Chris Edwards, Managing Partner shared the following: “We are very impressed with this group. We see a rare mix of pragmatism, technical know-how, and passion all backed by real results. The decision was an easy one to join IntelliCulture’s family of investors.”

A specific area of significant investment from IntelliCulture is in the safety and compliance space. Re-entry intervals and spray confidence are only getting more complex and there is a lack of tools available to growers to easily manage their operations. IntelliCulture released ground-breaking features for the 2024 growing season to effectively manage these critical items on the farm, and will continue to evolve the product to address the most pressing industry needs:

Regulatory and environmental pressures continue to rise for growers, especially in the high-value crop space and technology can play a critical role in helping the industry, provided it is grounded in positive ROI. Powers shared as a closing thought: "We are not shy to share the calculators of how we will get our growers a return through the platform. In fact we encourage it and we are in a fortunate position to have so many case studies with industry leading growers. At the end of the day, that's our vision; to create a platform that empowers growers to make quicker, easier decisions, and to share their best practices with one another.... that's how growth happens, through a genuine desire to be of service and do good work. We are grateful for the partners in Serra, Emmertech, and Tallgrass who are supportive in this mission, and cannot begin to express our appreciation for the continued trust and support from our growers.”

About IntelliCulture:
IntelliCulture provides an equipment management software for high-value crop producers that provides insights into spray coverage, equipment health and labor management.

The universal plug and play device connects into any piece of farm machinery to then report on spray effectiveness, equipment health and block-level cost accounting. In addition, the software digitizes task planning and warns of overdue or inefficient work, ensuring optimized use of labor and minimizing downtime in the operation.

The package is bundled into an easy-to-use system with automated alerting and reporting to streamline the management process for our growers in a simple, elegant fashion.