The founders of ePlant Inc. think they can use artificial intelligence to help people save trees and, in turn, the planet.
The Los Altos-based startup has developed a sensor designed to monitor tree health. Users can find out if their trees need to be watered or get other care tips by interacting with the AI-powered chatbot ePlant built into the sensor's corresponding app.
"My goal is to keep trees alive," Graham Hine, ePlant's CEO told the Business Journal. "Dying and damaged trees," he continued, "are one of the critical problems ... for residents, for consumers, for forestry and for agriculture. This is an artifact of the changing climate."
Hine co-founded ePlant in 2021 with Joseph Rizzi with the aim of changing the way society approaches tree health. Last week, after about two years of development, the startup, which has raised $10 million in angel funding, unveiled its TreeTag sensor, its first product.
TreeTag, which has a probe that users insert into a tree's trunk, tracks the tree's growth, the amount of irrigation it's getting, how it's leaning, signs of stress and how much carbon its capturing. It also keeps note of ambient environmental conditions, such as the temperature, humidity and light.
The data TreeTag gathers is like the tree's pulse; it's akin to what a nurse or doctor might collect with a human patient, Hine said. Just as a medical practitioner can glean a lot of information about a person from their vital signs, Hine and the ePlant team are betting the TreeTag data will yield similar insights.
"That pulse of the tree has a lot of biological information about it," Hine said. "We're in the early stages of an analysis for trees, and part of what we're trying to do with this program is to build up the dataset of tree health by putting these sensors out en masse."
Hine and Rizzi, who is ePlant's chairman, have a long history working with sensors and innovative technologies. In 2003, Hine and his brother Roger, who is ePlant's chief technology officer, co-founded Liquid Robotics Inc., a developer of seafaring drones. They stayed with the company through its acquisition by The Boeing Co. in 2016. Rizzi was Liquid Robotics' first investor.
Users can 'talk' to their trees
TreeTag is solar powered, weatherproof and compatible with most conventional trees other than palms. It transmits its data wirelessly to a hub — which users connect to their router — and from there to the cloud. Users can access their tree data via a mobile app, which can offer insights within 20 minutes of the sensor's installation, according to ePlant.
In the app, consumers name their trees and can "talk" to them — or, rather, the built-in chatbot — by asking questions like whether they need water. The app can also notify users if they need to take certain steps to care for their trees.
"What we're looking to do is to engage the consumer (via) an anthropomorphized tree," Hine said. He continued: "That tree can actually be like your pet. If people take care of a pet rock, surely they'll take care of a tree. This is actually easier. It's more fun, it's more interactive, and you can really make a difference."
EPlant isn't just springing its sensor on the public. Instead, institutions including California Polytechnic State University, Stanford University, the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Riverside have been testing it for the last two years, the company said in a news release. The city of San Luis Obispo has also been putting TreeTags through their paces.
The startup plans to sell a TreeTag kit that includes a sensor, a hub and one-year's worth of access to the mobile app for $249 — or $149 during a pre-sale promotion. EPlant plans to start shipping TreeTags to customers in November. It intends to charge a $2 a month ongoing subscription fee per tree for access to its mobile app. Its hub and hub will support dozens of sensors.
EPlant has gotten this far without an official venture round but with backing from angel investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners' partner John Thompson and Red Ventures Chief Marketing Officer Dan Feldstein, according to Hine. The startup will look at raising a seed round soon, he said.
"We're fighting a battle here, and it's getting harder and harder," he said. "Every human alive is breathing the oxygen equivalent of the output of seven trees. We don't just need to just keep a tree alive. You've got to keep seven trees alive just to breathe."
