Agricultural imagery and data analytics provider Ceres Imaging Inc. has announced it’s rebranding itself as Ceres AI after closing on a Series D round of funding and appointing a new chairman.
Ceres AI is an imaging and data company that’s looking to popularize precision farming techniques and help farmers improve their crop yields. It does this by taking high-quality aerial images of farmers’ fields and analyzing them using AI algorithms to try and obtain actionable insights.
The idea is that its insights can be used to inform more precise decisions around field management. For instance, farmers can use the platform to see which parts of a field are over- or under-watered, or spot crops that are nutrient-deficient or suffering from disease. By enabling smarter decisions, Ceres AI believes it can increase crop yields and make farming more efficient and profitable, while improving sustainability.
Ceres AI’s images are taken using extremely specialized and high-resolution cameras that can capture various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Specifically, what they do is measure the amount of light reflected by crops in near-infrared, as well as in green, blue and red wavelengths. The company also uses a separate thermal camera, which can measure the radiation emitted by crops, so as to calculate their temperature with extreme accuracy, to within a degree Celsius.
Once it has obtained these images, it runs them through proprietary software algorithms to calculate things like water stress. It uses AI to identify patterns within the results of this analysis to try and identify the cause of any water shortage. What’s special is it does this with such precision that it can identify different problems with specific rows of crops within the same field.
Another algorithm generates a “chlorophyll index,” which farmers can use to keep track of the amount of iron and nitrogen in specific parts of a field, so they can respond by adding more or less fertilizer to get the balance just right.
In addition, Ceres AI’s platform will rank these problems and issues based on their priority, so farmers can deal with the most consequential ones first. Besides suggesting ways to improve their crops, Ceres AI is also happy for one of its representatives to hop on the phone with farmers and explain in person the kinds of actions they need to take. It will even send an agent out to the farmer’s fields to investigate issues where the cause is more difficult to pin down.
Though initially catering to farmers, Ceres AI is now looking to expand its business, hence the need for a rebrand. Over its lifetime, the company has captured billions of unique, plant-level data points from fields all over the U.S.
It’s now using this dataset to help lenders and insurers properly assess the value of fields and their crops, based on the quality of soil, access to water resources and so on. As a result, its platform can help companies in those industries to better manage their land, mitigate risks, underwrite policies and more.
Ceres AI Chief Executive Ramsey Masri said his company has become a leader in the agriculture industry due to the sophisticated way it can capture and analyze farm and crop data. “Having leveraged AI and ML since inception, we felt it was time to highlight our strengths in this area with a name that better reflects our foundation and leadership in the space,” he explained.
Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that Ceres AI’s evolution underscores the vital importance of data in the AI revolution.
“Having collected vast amounts of crop and field data over the years, Ceres AI is now looking to become more of a data-as-a-service company,” he said. “The plan is to license its agribusiness data to other interested parties that might want to make use of it, such as banks and insurance companies. It’s an interesting idea that justifies the rebranding, and I think a lot of companies with similar ideas will be curious to see how successful it will be.”
The exact amount raised in the latest funding round was undisclosed, but Ceres AI did reveal it was led by Remus Capital, which previously participated in its $38 million Series C round in September 2023. Prior to the latest round, the company had raised $83.8 million in total, according to Crunchbase data.
Ceres AI said Remus Capital specializes in applying AI technologies to large verticals, and so in line with that, it intends to use the money from today’s round to expand its presence into vertical markets within the agribusiness and financial services sectors. As part of the funding deal, Remus Capital CEO Krishna K. Gupta has been appointed the new chairman of Ceres AI.
“Given the distribution challenges intrinsic to the agriculture industry, incumbent startups like Ceres AI are poised to capture most of the value,” Gupta said. “We will be very involved in incorporating the latest AI advances to benefit Ceres’ customers and scale the company’s business in insurance, lending and agribusiness companies. It is a new era for Ceres.”