Gro Intelligence has raised $85 million in Series B funding to accelerate growth and global adoption of its Gro Platform, an AI-powered insights platform for decision-making tools, solutions and analytics to the food, agriculture, and climate economies and their participants.
The round was co-led by Intel Capital, Africa Internet Ventures (a strategic partnership between TPG Growth and EchoVC), and the family offices of Ronald Lauder and Eric Zinterhofer. They were joined by previous investors DCVC and GGV Capital. Participating new investors include Schusterman Family Investments, Dick Parsons, Rethink Food and various strategic family offices.
“Food security and climate risk represent existential global-sized opportunities for our AI-powered decisions and insights platform. We see a tremendous need for the market knowledge provided by the Gro Platform,” said Sara Menker, Gro’s Founder and CEO. “We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new investors and continue to be grateful to our existing investors for their support.”
The firm in 2017 raised 17.4 million in a Series A round from TPG Growth as well as Data Collective and unspecified strategic family offices.
The Agri-tech firm helps investment professionals, major corporations, governments and international organizations around the world with insightful, reliable data for solutions in the face of growth in global investment in food and agribusiness.
With offices in Nairobi and New York, where it’s CEO is based, Gro Intelligence uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide current and future insights into the global food and agriculture industry. Menker adds that gro Intelligence’s customers rely on it as a unique source of actionable data-driven insights about our food supply and models to measure and manage associated climate change risk to physical and financial assets across the globe.
“Gro Intelligence is one of the most exciting AI companies and is tackling two of the world’s biggest challenges: food security and climate risk. Their software-based platform will drive compute-powered cross-border knowledge to surface meaningful insights and enable better informed agricultural decisions,” said Trina Van Pelt, Senior Managing Director, Intel Capital. “We are excited to co-lead this investment round because Gro Intelligence’s technology aligns with our mission of unleashing the power of data to improve the world.”
“Gro Intelligence has had a remarkable journey so far and demonstrates the growing importance of AI in driving a more sustainable food supply,” said Yemi Lalude, Managing Partner of TPG Africa. “TPG Growth is proud to have supported the company from its beginnings in Nairobi to the forefront of today’s efforts to make companies and institutions across multiple industries around the world more resilient to climate change and climate risk.”
Through its partnership with EchoVC, TPG Growth also led Gro’s Series A-2 financing round in 2017.
“With its AI-powered platform, Gro Intelligence is solving, at scale, two of the world’s most pressing problems – climate risk and food security,” said Julia Paliare, Managing Director at the Family Office of Ronald Lauder. “Sara’s vision, leadership and experience, along with the remarkable technology and team she has assembled, have positioned the company for accelerated growth at a time when these issues are so critically important.”