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farm produce a lot of data . From machines to irrigation systems , farms generate a band of data that could be helpful to both them and the company that serve them . Traditionally this data point has been siloed across different formats , establish it hard to read and make off of . Leaf is trying to shift that .
New York - based Leaf is face to build the Plaid of farm data , Colorado - founder and CEO Bailey Stockdale told TechCrunch . The company takes a farm ’s unstructured datum , standardize it , and loads it into an software programming interface ( API ) . This reserve Leaf customer , who range from crop insurance supplier to agtech startups , to better utilize and build up off the data point . Customers pay for the table service establish on how many acres their data is harvested from .
Stockdale said he get the idea for the company in 2018 when the handler of his family ’s farm told him that to decide which day would be best to found seeds , he would go out at 6 a.m. to stick a thermometer into the ground . If it take 70 degree , they would plant the seed , if it did n’t , they would n’t . The anecdote stuck with Stockdale .
“ Agriculture , it is a funny industry ; it is at the same time extremely sophisticated and totally antediluvian , ” Stockdale said . “ My family has had a farm in Illinois for over 100 years . In that clock time , a lot of things have change but some things have n’t . ”
He said his first idea was to follow up some technology to aid the farm choose which crops to plant and when . He bonk the farm had loads of data from their tractor and decided to start there , but the data he found , while bountiful , was fabulously difficult to decipher . He was odd how other tech companionship were able to make any use of it .
“ I just started call people and asking them , ‘ How do you do this ? ’ And no one had a good answer , ” Stockdale said . “ I say , ‘ OK , maybe it is time to go obtain something else to do . ’ There is no way anyone can break into this base ; perhaps it would be interesting to clear this . If I ramp up this infrastructure stratum so they can work up these other enjoyment face on top of it , there is a huge range of function cases that need this data . ”
So Stockdale pivot and Leaf was establish . He state ramp up the product was tedious , as they had to reverse locomotive engineer each data data file eccentric separately . Leaf started sell in mid-2021 and now work with more than 80 fellowship , include agriculture whale like Bayer and Syngenta .
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The inauguration just raised a $ 11.3 million Series A rhythm . Stockdale state that despite the company ’s grip , it took a few calendar month of pitching to find investor interest because not many masses understand just how bad the farm data problem was . But after four months , Leaf found its people . The round was pass by Spero Ventures with participation for be investors , including S2 G Ventures , Radicle Growth and SP Ventures , among others .
Stockdale said Leaf is give-up the ghost to put the money toward building out a commercial-grade go - to - market team . He added that he ’s been on all of the sales visit for the last six month and that just is n’t sustainable anymore . Leaf will also employ the capital to continue improving the product to well answer to new use cases from their customers .
One area is improving the timbre and truth of the data ; some of Leaf ’s customers are look to use it as input for AI prediction models surrounding matter like when to plant which crop and where or how much they should care for a field of force with certain fertilizer base on prior years ’ data . Leaf also has customers look to go end to end with their data on Leaf , take a swarm provider like AWS , something that Stockdale said the company want to extend .
“ husbandry is a really interesting industry in itself because of the paradox of high edification and zero sophistication , ” Stockdale sound out . “ It ’s neat to get in with a fortune of these customer and get part ; now that we are rolling , we are kind of imbed . It ’s a great industry and bringing something new to market is a little bit of a boastful wager . [ Leaf is ] an API in a fair antiquated industry but it ’s working . ”
