Kenyan startup secures $85-million funding

Gro Intelligence, an AI-powered insights company, has secured $85-million in Series B funding co-led by Intel Africa, Africa Internet Ventures, and several other investors including GGV Capital, DCVC, Schusterman Family Investments, Dick Parsons, Rethink Food, and more. 

 Gro Intelligence has secured $85-million in funding

According to Gro Intelligence, the funding will be utilised to accelerate the growth and global adoption of the Gro Platform. In addition, it will be used to enhance the platform’s existing machine-learning capabilities in providing localised insights on food, agriculture, and climate risk. 

In an official press release, Trina Van Pelt, Senior Managing Director, Intel Capital comments on its investment made into Gro Intelligence. 

“Gro Intelligence is one of the most exciting AI companies and is tackling two of the world’s biggest challenges: food security and climate risk. Their software-based platform will drive compute-powered cross-border knowledge to surface meaningful insights and enable better informed agricultural decisions. We are excited to co-lead this investment round because Gro Intelligence’s technology aligns with our mission of unleashing the power of data to improve the world.”

Gro Intelligence 

Founded in 2004 in Nairobi Kenya and with headquarters in New York, Gro Intelligence utilises innovative AI technology to aggregate, normalise and model complex data of the inter-relationships between food, climate, trade, agriculture, and macroeconomic conditions. 

Sara Menker, founder, and CEO of Gro Intelligence provides insight into how the startup positively contributes to the global economy. 

“Food security and climate risk represent existential global-sized opportunities for our AI-powered decisions and insights platform. We see a tremendous need for the market knowledge provided by the Gro Platform. Our customers have come to rely on Gro as a unique source of actionable data-driven insights about our food supply and models to measure and manage associated climate change risk to physical and financial assets across the globe. We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new investors and continue to be grateful to our existing investors for their support.”

The data collected provides decision-making tools, solutions, and analytics to the food, agriculture, and climate economies. The tech startup claims to integrate over 40 000 data sets and processes ‘north of 650-trillion data points’. 

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Featured image: Sara Mender, founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, Twitter