Machine-learning company Prospera announced today a Series A investment of $7 million led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The funding will be utilized to bring Prospera’s AI-based solutions to more farmers and ag businesses worldwide.

Prospera develops advanced techniques in deep leaning, computer vision and data science, in order to transform farming from an intuition-based practice to an optimized data-based practice. With in-field cameras and climatic sensors, Prospera is the only company that offers uniquely accurate remote agronomy and management solutions to farmers around the world. These solutions empower them with real-time analysis on what is happening to their crops from a leaf by leaf basis to a multi-field multi crop basis, allowing them to tackle critical issues of underperforming fields caused by pests, disease, irrigation, nutrient deficiencies and sub-optimal agro-technical activities.

“The agriculture industry is a great candidate for applying pragmatic AI. Prospera is aiming to lead the way to making agriculture intelligent and efficient with technology by solving the key pain points of growers globally” said Daniel Koppel, CEO and co-founder of Prospera. “Recent breakthroughs in neural networks combined with the commoditization of cloud computing and sensors have made it possible for us to develop field-analytics solutions that predict and improve performance in a new and revolutionary way.”

The global agriculture economy is worth trillions of dollars, and it is far from performing efficiently and at its peak. With external pressures of a growing population and increasing environmental concerns, farmers must find ways to grow more sustainably and to optimize crop yield. Prospera’s technology provides a cost-effective and scalable solution, enabling farmers to grow in a more efficient and sustainable way; decreasing wasted crops, ensuring water, pesticides and fertilizers are used only as required, and enabling the maximum potential crop yield to be delivered to market. Already operational in medium to large greenhouse farms across Europe, North America, and Israel, Prospera’s technology is being used by farms that supply some of the largest grocery retailers in Europe and the US, including Walmart, Tesco, Sainsburys and Aldi.

“Prospera is generating unique and proprietary data on crops at a level of granularity which never before existed in the agriculture world. Combining this unique data with some of the best experts in computer vision and machine learning has the potential to revolutionize the way we grow food” said Adam Fisher, at Bessemer Venture Partners. “As investments in AgTech are anticipated to continue rising this year, we are pleased to be working with this unique company that is optimizing crop yields based on proximal imaging and deep learning technology."