Aerobotics Co-founders James Paterson and Benji Meltzer.

Artificial intelligence-driven imagery analytics startup Aerobotics has closed a series A funding round worth $US 4 million.

In an announcement indicative of the burgeoning growth in the agricultural analytics space, the startup announced the closing of the round at the opening of its new offices in Cape Town, South Africa.

“We are grateful that Paper Plane Ventures has put their faith and capital in our company, which we will use to expand our growth in South Africa, the United States and around the world and increase our ability of helping farmers and partners in the agriculture industry,” said Aerobotics Co-founder and CEO James Paterson.

Aerobotics is built on a proprietary AI product that processes UAV- and satellite-derived imagery to analyse health, pests, volume and other calculations down to the individual tree or vine level on agricultural plots.

The company that also announced that two of its executive team were relocating to California to work on business growth, and that a new yield analytics tool to be built into its core Aeroview product would be commercially available at the beginning of the North American 2019 growing season.

Aerobotics Head of Product, Nasreen Patel, said that the new tool would allow farmers to select a yield sample in their orchard, capture fruit counts and size, and get a report on the size distribution and number of fruits.

“We believe this new field management technology that is being built right into Aeroview will empower farmers to collect more accurate data in-field and make more informed decisions on thinning their fruit and, ultimately, optimising their yield,” he said.

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