Chicago startup Sabanto Inc. hopes take the agriculture industry in a new direction with automation, and help solve some of the labor challenges seen across the sector in the process.
The agriculture technology startup raised $17 million in Series A funding this week that it said will be used to make autonomy an affordable, reliable and scalable solution for farmers throughout the world.
Agtech venture firm Fulcrum Global Capital led the round with other investors including DCVC Bio, Hico Capital, Yara Growth Ventures, Cavallo Ventures and Trimble Ventures. Johnsonville Ventures, the parent company of Johnsonville LLC — a 77-year-old sausage maker out of Wisconsin — also contributed to the funding.
Sabanto seeks to solve some of the challenges modern farmers currently face including labor shortages, nonstop field operations, weather and capital expenses for agriculture machinery by providing farming-as-a-service — a pay-per-use or subscription model that provides innovative and professional-grade solutions for agriculture and associated services.
"We started Sabanto with our sights set on fixing the lack of labor and resetting the out-of-control capital expenses in agricultural machinery," said Craig Rupp, founder and CEO of Sabanto, in a statement. "We see a future of smarter, smaller, lighter, less expensive and more sustainable swarms of autonomous equipment, substituting horsepower and weight for time."
The global farming-as-a-service market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of around 15.3% from 2021 to 2026, according to a recent report from Research and Markets.
The report states that added benefits of farming-as-a-service include scalability and lower costs.
Sabanto said it can automate a variety of row crop field operations and has used tractors to to autonomously till, plant, seed, weed and mow farmland across the Midwest. The company's advanced mission control system enables the deployment for days of nonstop operation.
John Peryam, co-founder and partner at Fulcrum, will join Sabanto's board of directors.
