Taranis, a software platform to help farmers anticipate agricultural conditions, announced this week that it has closed a $7.5 million Series A round of financing led by Finistere Ventures, an AgTech (agricultural technology) venture pioneer, and Vertex Ventures. Existing investors, EshbolInvestments, Mindset Ventures, OurCrowd, and angel investor Eyal Gura, also joined the round.

Today, the agricultural industry loses more than $300 billion each year due to crop diseases and pests. Taranis says it is pushing farmers to rethink how they approach crop disease and pest control, as well as how they prepare for and address weather concerns— and helping them increase profits by more than 15 percent in the process.

“We invest in innovators with the ability to transform an industry and were drawn to Taranis’ exceptional leadership team, machine learning expertise, proven analytics platform and early on-farm successes,” said Yanai Oron, general partner, Vertex. “Taranis offers a comprehensive and affordable crop management solution, and the pest and disease prediction algorithms it developed set the company apart from its competitors.”

Taranis said it will use the latest investment to further mature its scalable pest and disease prediction platform and substantially grow its global reach.

Taranis was accepted into the Microsoft Ventures accelerator in 2015 and completed a $2 million funding round in April 2016.

(via Israel21c)

[Photo: James Watkins / Flickr ]