Seattle-based agriculture tech company Strella Biotechnology has raised an $8 million Series A round.
The round, announced Tuesday, comes roughly five months after the startup moved to Seattle from Philadelphia.
Strella co-founder and CEO Katherine Sizov said the 5-year-old company uses a coworking space in Belltown but is looking for more permanent office space with somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 square feet.
"We do a pretty decent amount of hardware and manufacturing work, so we're looking for a hybrid space that can flex into office and desks but also can turn into a workplace where we can bring pallets of bananas into our office and test them," Sizov said.
Sizov added that the goal is to have a new space within the next six months or so. The company has about 15 employees but plans to hit around 25 or 30 a year from now, Sizov said. Most of the company is based in Seattle, but Strella still has a lab in Philadelphia.
Strella makes sensors to help packers, importers and retailers monitor the ripeness of produce. This allows packers to know which rooms of produce are most ripe and should be shipped first, which is mostly done through educated guessing at this point, Sizov said.
Importers, meanwhile, can better know what produce to send to retailers first, while retailers can better decide what produce to put on shelves first. According to Strella, the company so far has monitored more than 2.1 billion pieces of fruit.
Sizov said Strella mainly works with apples and pears right now. Because about 80% of apples and pears consumed in the U.S. are produced in Washington, Sizov added, the company decided to move to Seattle.
Millennium New Horizons led the round, while Google Ventures, Rich Products Ventures, Mark Cuban, Yamaha Motor Ventures, Catapult Ventures and Union Labs participated. Millennium New Horizons has invested in big-name tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Strella isn't the only Seattle-area startup using technology to reduce food waste. Seattle-based Shelf Engine takes multiple sources of data and automates ordering for grocery stores in an attempt to reduce food waste from excess ordering.
"They're attacking the problem from a demand planning side," Sizov said. "We're kind of supply planning, if you will. There's no one answer to a lot of these food waste or supply chain issues. The problem has to be tackled with a number of different approaches."
