Agtech startup iUNU looks to double headcount after $24M raise

Seattle-based agricultural technology startup iUNU wants to double its headcount over the next year after raising a $24 million Series B round Wednesday.

IUNU (pronounced "you knew") has roughly 60 employees, according to Allison Kopf, the company's chief marketing officer and head of data products. Kopf said the company, which has office space near Lumen Field, can grow its team without needing to expand.

Although the company has adopted remote work, its headquarters will remain in Seattle.

"We still have that large presence in Seattle at the headquarters, but now we have a broader team," Kopf said. "As we've hired, we've spread out to even more remote locations. We're across all of the United States but still maintain the headquarters in Seattle."

IUNU, founded in 2013, uses cameras to continuously take pictures of crops and runs those images through computer vision technology to identify potential problems early for growers. The company also digitizes manual checklists growers need to accomplish regularly to meet food safety requirements.

Kopf said iUNU works with crops that are grown indoors, like leafy greens, flowers, vine crops and cannabis, which is a smaller market and thus a smaller portion of the company's revenue. According to iUNU, the company works with more than 25% of the leafy greens growers in North America.

The company is hiring roles in engineering, sales, customer success and operations. Lewis & Clark Ventures led the round. S2G Ventures, Ceres Partners and Astanor Ventures all participated in the Series B.

In addition to growing its team, Kopf said the company is eyeing international expansion; iUNU is mostly in North America at this point. She added that the company is starting to expand into Europe and is also looking at New Zealand and Australia.

IUNU has also started connecting growers with financing, Kopf said, as the company's data can provide thorough risk profiles of growers' businesses. According to the company, iUNU has helped lenders finance more than $150 million so far.

"We expect the scale of that to be on the billions of dollars in the next 12 to 18 months," Kopf said. "We've become really well-connected with some of these project finance and debt capital funds that want to invest into this space. What we do is we use the data in our system to identify what might make a good opportunity for what type of capital."