May 4, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

It wasn’t long ago that precision agtech leader Solinftec broke the record for the largest agtech funding round in Latin America (it was February 2020 as a matter of fact).

Little more than two years (and one pandemic) later, and the company announced its closing on $60 million in growth capital led by the Lightsmith Group that it stated it will use to further expand its digital farm platform in North and South America. 

Additional participants in the round included existing investors Unbox Capital, which led Solinftec’s $40 million Series B in February 2020, and Circularis Partners, along with other unidentified backers. 

Founded in São Paulo in 2007 by a team of seven engineers led by Britaldo Hernandez, Solinftec today has operations across two continents, with headquarters in Aracatuba, São Paulo, Brazil, and U.S. headquarters established in West Lafayette, Indiana, in November 2018 where the company established operations at the Purdue Research Park in Tippecanoe County.

Since its launch, Solinftec has been developing solutions designed to answer the practical challenges associated with managing complex farming operations being faced by growers.

The company leverages sensors, computers, and displays in farm equipment to give customers a valuable set of real-time, in-field data on their crops, equipment, inputs, and weather conditions. 

Solinftec’s farm management software is powered by its AI platform ALICE AI – an integrated, end-to-end farm operations management platform covering all key operations and on-farm equipment including planting, sprayers, harvesting, and tendering, that allows customers to optimally schedule and plan their management to make real-time decisions and adjustments that would ensure the best results.

In March of this year the company enhanced this platform with the launch of its new robot able to scan and monitor fields. Programmed with a neurological network featuring a complex detection algorithm, this in-field robot had the ability to not only scan crop health and nutrition factors, insects, and weeds, but can monitor a field’s entire ecosystem and provide real-time insights. 

“For the past 15 years, we’ve been dedicated to evolving agriculture practices hand-in-hand with farmers,” said Britaldo Hernandez, CEO, Solinftec in March. “There has always been a pull between ag operations and the field’s ecosystem, but we are excited to build new technologies that orchestrate bringing these together and democratize the knowledge.”

Today, Solinftec’s technology is being applied across 27 million acres of farmland in Brazil, the U.S., and across Latin America by growers, cooperatives, and ag retailers for field crops such as sugarcane, soy, corn, and cotton, as well as permanent crops including citrus, coffee, and timber. Solinftec serves 85 percent of Brazil’s sugarcane growers, the top five grain producers in Brazil, and GROWMARK, one of the largest agricultural cooperatives in North America.

“Disruptive technology, in other words, artificial intelligence, data, and automation, can help the agricultural sector overcome its biggest challenge: to produce more food in every square meter of land, with less impact,” said Hernandez.

“Our mission is to give each farm a sustainable future, promoting the accessibility of technologies to producers and transforming agriculture into a more productive practice, while preserving the planet,” he continued.

For Lightsmith, this investment aligns with its focus on growth-stage companies in agriculture and food, water, energy, finance, or supply chains, that are developing solutions that can help assess and manage the increased risks and impact from climate change.

“As climate change and other disruptions continue to put pressure on agricultural productivity and food costs, we need to scale solutions that can help farmers increase productivity per acre while reducing input usage and increasing their responsiveness to changing climate and weather conditions,” notes Sanjay Wagle, managing director, Lightsmith Group.

“We are excited to partner with Solinftec in their next stage of growth to become the ‘operating system’ for intelligent, sustainable, and resilient farming.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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