Taranis, the Israeli-based aerial imaging company, has raised $30 million in a new round of venture capital funding, the company announced. Taranis has raised $60 million to date and plans a broadscale rollout of the company’s agronomic intelligence service.
The CEO of Taranis, Ofir Schlam, spoke at NAAA’s Ag Aviation Expo last year about its remarkable aerial imaging technology and the synergies it could present to agricultural aviation operations by mounting Taranis’ proprietary high-tech camera pod to ag aircraft. Although Taranis relies on satellites, manned aircraft and UAVs to provide images of various resolutions, Schlam said manned aircraft is the best vehicle to take aerial images due to its speed and altitude and told NAAA Expo attendees that ag pilots are ideally suited for this type of flying.
Taranis’ proprietary AI2 SmartScout Solutions captures 0.3mm/pixel resolution images of fields from planes and drones at a speed of 100 acres in 6 minutes. With this technology, Taranis states it can generate precise, leaf-level diagnosis 20 times faster than the manual alternative, and with 20 times more data points scouted. AI2 SmartScout Solutions also leverages a database of more than 1 million threat species to create accurate prescription plans to customize treatments and application rates.
In Taranis’ announcement of its latest round of funding, Schlam said, “Until recently, growers have had to wait on time-consuming manual scouting to assess threats, formulate an action plan, and react. Our ag intelligence service takes out the guesswork and brings hyperlocal, real-time insights from the fields to your fingertips. And we’re not stopping there. We have exciting programs in our pipeline which will completely change the reactive risk mitigation model of today, to an outcome-based approach informed by predictive threat thresholds and yield expectations.”
With this additional funding, Taranis may be taking the lead in the crowded aerial imaging spectrum, industry observers, including NAAA, noted.
The company’s investors are understandably bullish about Taranis’ prospects as well. “The agtech market will soon see consolidation around imagery with just a few strong players remaining. We firmly believe that Taranis will be leading the pack,” said Hock Chuan Tam, managing director of Vertex Growth. “With Taranis’ support, growers, retailers, cooperatives and crop consultants can detect, analyze and treat crop issues at their earliest signs, taking preventive measures with unprecedented precision and gaining a higher degree of control over their crop yield than ever before.”
To date, Taranis has partnerships with the leading retail, ag equipment and crop protection companies, including John Deere, Syngenta, Nutrien, Climate Corp. and BASF. Furthermore, Taranis technology has scouted more than 2 million acres of commodity crops across the world.
