London-based crop monitoring startup PlanetWatchers raises $11M to support crop insurers and drive its expansion plans

We covered PlanetWatchers In June 2021 after the London-based geospatial intelligence startup raised $3.5 million in Series A funding to provide Analytics as a Service (AaaS) to the crop insurance industry. The round was co-led by Seraphim Capital and Creative Ventures, a Deep Tech venture fund, co-led the funding round.

Fast forward a little over a year later, PlanetWatchers announced today that it has $11 million in Series A funding round to support its ambitious growth plans. The fresh capital infusion will also allow the company to invest in its industry-leading SAR-based data analytics alongside expanding its commercial teams to address the increasing market demand to help solve global food security issues.

The latest funding round allows PlanetWatchers to significantly increase its commercial footprint with crop insurers and agricultural input providers. The funding proceeds will also allow the company to continue to invest in its industry-leading SAR-based data analytics alongside the expansion of its commercial teams to maximize opportunities and address the increasing market demand to help solve global food security issues.

Founded in 2016 by Ariel Smoliar, Dominic Edmunds, Roi Shilo, and Shai Lev, PlanetWatchers provides a SaaS solution for enterprises, governments, and NGOs to monitor their natural assets across multiple sectors. PlanetWatchers uses advanced machine learning to support crop insurers and the agricultural industry in verifying cover crops, tillage, planting dates, acreage, crop classification, and weather damage at scale.

The Company uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to provide accurate insight at scale. PlanetWatchers exploits the unique benefits of SAR, to create in-season insights that reduce overheads and increase customer satisfaction.

The startup, which also works with a large number of crop insurance companies, uses time series-based radar data to provide detailed analysis of claims without ever visiting the field. The use of SAR, a powerful remote sensing technology bouncing microwave signals off the Earth’s surface, helps PlanetWatchers to detect physical properties and their changes to them over time, proving valuable insight to its customers.

In a statement, PlanetWatchers CEO Dominic Edmunds said: “I’m delighted that PlanetWatchers can now take the next steps on our ambitious journey to tell the story of every field. We are thrilled to have the support of both Serpahim and Creative as co-leads and the other investors in the round. We look forward to expanding our market-leading technology and our commercial footprint together.”