Smart Planting AgTech Firm Aikenong Surpasses 100M Yuan in Series A Funds
Aikenong, the first Chinese smart planting decision services provider, announced on Thursday that it has raised over 100 million yuan ($14.9 million) in Series A and Series A+ financing. Series A was led by Source Code Capital, and Series A+ was led by GL Ventures and IDG. Linear Capital and Bits x Bites were co-investors in both rounds.
Established in 2016, Aikenong specializes in providing full-fertility smart planting decision guidance services to agricultural producers.
Most digital agriculture models within the market are based on sensor hardware for data collection and program management. However, Aikenong has built the Aikenong Smart Planting Decision-Making System through its independently developed “plant-soil-atmosphere continuum” model and big data-driven intelligent agriculture technology system, combined with modern technologies such as satellite and drone remote sensing monitoring, AI prediction and mobile internet. Automated farming solutions for different regions are created by inputting data from the corresponding farmland.
The core R&D team are scientists and dozens of doctors from top research institutions in China, the US and the UK. The company also cooperates with top institutions in the world, such as Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, Rothamsted Research in the UK and Bayer Group in Germany, to continuously promote research in the field of agricultural AI. Up to now, the service scope covers more than 10 provinces and cities in China, serving 26 million mu of land and improving average harvests by about 200 yuan.
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Guo Jianming, the founder and CEO of Aikenong, said that data of the services these years showed that their digital tools can already help farmers increase yielding by 5% to 15% based on 10% to 20% lower cost inputs without IoT devices.
