We covered PlanetWatchers in June 2021 after the London-based geospatial intelligence startup raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to provide Analytics as a Service AaaS to the crop insurance industry. The funding round was co-managed by Seraphim Capital and Creative Ventures, a Deep Tech venture fund.
PlanetWatchers announced today that it has $11 million in Series A funding to support its ambitious growth plans, a little over a year later. Infusion of capital will allow the company to invest in its industry leading SAR-based data analytics alongside expanding its commercial teams to address the growing market demand to solve global food security issues.
PlanetWatchers can increase its commercial footprint with crop insurers and agricultural input providers thanks to the latest funding round. The funding proceeds will allow the company to invest in its industry-leading SAR-based data analytics alongside the expansion of its commercial teams to meet the increasing market demand to solve global food security issues.
PlanetWatchers is a SaaS solution for businesses, governments, and NGOs to monitor their natural assets in multiple sectors, founded in 2016 by Ariel Smoliar, Dominic Edmunds, Roi Shilo and Shai Lev. PlanetWatchers uses advanced machine learning to support crop insurers and the agricultural industry in verifying cover crops, tillage, planting dates, crop classification, and weather damage at scale.
The Company uses Synthetic Aperture Radar SAR data to provide accurate insight at scale. PlanetWatchers exploits the unique benefits of SAR to create in-season insights that reduce overheads and increase customer satisfaction.
The startup, which works with a large number of crop insurance companies, uses time series-based radar data to provide detailed analysis of claims without ever visiting the field. PlanetWatchers can detect physical properties and their changes over time by using SAR, a powerful remote sensing technology that bounces microwave signals off the Earth's surface.
In a statement, PlanetWatchers CEO Dominic Edmunds said: "I am delighted that PlanetWatchers can now take the next steps on our ambitious journey to tell the story of every field. We are thrilled to have the support of both Creative and Serpahim in the round. We look forward to expanding our market-leading technology and our commercial footprint together.