Sabanto Raises $17M to Advance Agriculture Autonomy
August 18, 2022
Sabanto, which develops technology to add autonomy to existing agricultural equipment, has announced raising $17 million in Series A funding. Funding will be used to increase its farming-as-a-service operations to more farms, on more crops, across more states.
“We started Sabanto with our sights on fixing the lack of labor and resetting the out-of-control capital expenses in agricultural machinery,” said Craig Rupp, founder and CEO of Sabanto. “We see a future of smarter, smaller, lighter, less expensive, and more sustainable swarms of autonomous equipment, substituting horsepower and weight for time. We’ve assembled a team of actual ag-experienced engineers and scientists, working alongside real farmers, proving this isn’t just a thought exercise.”
The company said it has been able to automate a variety of row crop field operations over significant acres throughout the Midwest. Leveraging a fleet of smaller 60 and 90 HP tractors, Sabanto has autonomously tilled, planted, seeded, weeded, applied and mowed across Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas. The company’s mission control platform can deploy multiple systems for multiple days of non-stop operation. For example, the company once was able to plant more than 750 acres of corn and soybeans in one season with a single 60 HP tractor.
“Finally, a company is solving our labor problems and taking us in the other direction,” said JJ Granstrom, owner of Granstrom Farms and a customer of Sabanto. “We’re witnessing a huge snowball effect, and it’s all because of the size of the machinery.”
The funding round was led by Fulcrum Global Capital, with participation from DCVC Bio, Hico Capital, Yara Growth Ventures, Cavallo Ventures, Johnsonville Ventures, and Trimble Ventures. John Peryam, co-founder and partner at Fulcrum, will join Sabanto’s board of directors.
“Sabanto combines a talented and experienced team with a differentiated and well-developed technology stack, focused on an agriculture industry experiencing significant global tailwinds towards autonomy,” said Peryam.
For more details on the company and its technologies, visit the Sabanto website here.
