Prospera s technology helps keep tabs on crops (Courtesy)
Valmont Industries, Inc., a US maker of irrigation and infrastructure equipment, said Wednesday it has entered an accord to buy Israel’s Prospera Technologies, a maker of artificial intelligence-based sensors and cameras for monitoring crops, for $300 million.
The acquisition is the culmination of a two-year strategic partnership set up between the companies in 2019. The merging of the firms will create the “largest global, vertically-integrated artificial intelligence (AI) company in agriculture,” the companies said in a statement.
With in-field cameras and climatic sensors, Prospera allows farmers to accurately remote-manage their fields with real-time analysis on what is happening to their crops leaf by leaf and on a multi-field, multi-crop basis. This access allows them to tackle critical issues of underperforming fields caused by pests, disease, irrigation, nutrient deficiencies and sub-optimal agro-technical a
Valmont buys Israeli ag-tech AI co Prospera for $300m
The Tel Aviv-based company develops intelligent solutions to help farmers grow crops more efficiently.
US agricultural services and irrigation equipment company Valmont Industries Inc. (NYSE: VMI) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Israeli based ag-tech AI company Prospera Technologies for $300 million. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021.
Prospera was founded in 2014 by CEO Daniel Koppel, Shimon Shpiz, and Raviv Itzhaky and since 2019 has been teaming with Valmont on digital and autonomous farming. The Tel Aviv-based company develops intelligent solutions to help farmers to grow crops more efficiently. The partnership has expanded Prospera s solutions, monitoring five million acres in 2020 against an original estimate of one million, with twice as many growers using the service as compared to 2019. Grower adoption is expected to double in 2021, with greater acceleratio
10 Israeli startups on CB Insights’ AI 100 list for 2021
This year’s cohort represents 12 countries and is driving innovation across 18 industries including healthcare, climate risk and virus modeling.
Dotan Asselmann (CTO) and Tamir Wolf (CEO), cofounders of surgical intelligence platform Theator. Photo courtesy of Theator
The New York-based technology insights platform’s research team picked these 100 private market vendors from a pool of over 6,000 applicants and nominees.
Representing 12 countries and 18 industries, they were chosen based on factors including business relations, investor profile, R&D activity, market potential, team strength and tech novelty.
Seven of the 10 are headquartered in Israel:
• Beewise invented the world’s first autonomous beehive, Beehome, which houses up to 40 bee colonies. Beekeepers can mind them through a mobile app.
Why The Evolution Of Civilization Will Always Be Tied To Irrigation Technology forbes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forbes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Hugo Hagen, the managing director & country division head of Bayer, Israel. (Courtesy: Danit Nitzan/Bayer)
If the coronavirus pandemic has proved something to global pharmaceutical giants, it is that they need to tap into the power of younger, nimbler startups and the latest technologies to be able to stay at the top of their game and ahead of competition.
Of the three coronavirus vaccines being widely distributed in the West, one was the result of a partnership between a blue chip pharma firm and a biotech startup Pfizer-BioNTech; one was the result of a collaboration between another massive firm and a university AstraZeneca-Oxford; and one was developed by a pharmaceutical company that has barely been around for a decade Moderna.