Australian agritech company SwarmFarm has raised AU$30 million in a Series B funding round to accelerate US expansion of its lightweight, autonomous farm robots and partner ecosystem. The funding has been led by Edaphon, a Belgian evergreen fund along with participation from CEFC (Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation), investment management firm QIC, and and other existing backers, including Tenacious Ventures, Emmertech, Tribe Global Ventures, Access Capital and GrainInnovate.
SwarmFarm’s integrated autonomy and open SwarmConnect marketplace have registered more than 220,000 operating hours across two million+ hectares. CEFC’s AU$7 million investment via the Powering Australia Technology Fund will help scale SwarmFarm’s lightweight, autonomous vehicle SwarmBots across agriculture and horticulture with a focus on precision operations, achieving a 95% reduction in herbicide use and cutting fuel related emissions by 35%.
Investment in Precision and Sustainability
Edaphon has framed its leading role in investment as a speculative support for integrated autonomy and farmer-first design, saying SwarmFarm’s approach can deliver both productivity and environmental gains. CEFC’s participation in the investment round aligns with its mandate to back low emission technologies in primary industries, industries that focus on converting natural raw materials into commodities. CEFC also pointed to reductions in fuel consumption, chemicals, and minimal soil disruption, when lightweight, task specific robots replace traditional passes.
SwarmFarm’s innovation offers a commercially viable, scalable solution – and that’s exactly what the Powering Australia Technology Fund was built to support. We’re supporting a company with a strong track record that’s now poised for its next stage of growth.
The funding is aimed at accelerating production, expanding deployments, and deepening SwarmFarm’s partner ecosystem as the company seeks to execute precision driven, low-impact model across Australian fields.
SwarmFarm Autonomous Approaches
Founded in 2015 in Gindie near Emerald in Queensland’s Central Highlands, SwarmFarm seeks to use a different pathway moving away from use of large, powerful, and expensive machinery. Taking off from the conventional focus on horsepower, the company intends to use small, purpose built platforms and open SwarmConnect marketplace to ‘untether productivity from machine size.’
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This approach diverts focus from machine size to mechanisms like cloud, virtualization, and mobile technologies. SwarmFarm operations in in commercial fields across Australia and North America address issues like soil compaction, high input costs and rigid workflows associated with large tractors and sprayers.
Our SwarmBots are designed to be versatile platforms that can integrate a range of attachments from different partners, from precision sprayers to mowers, giving farmers the flexibility to adapt the technology to suit their needs.
SwarmFarm’s approach has three models for user and localized autonomy. The first part of this approach is the use of bolt-on kits for existing tractors. Bolt-on kits are aftermarket packages designed to be installed on existing tractors to add new functions or upgrade performance without modifying the core machine. Secondly, SwarmFarm wants to expand the use of closed Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) platforms, technology frameworks built by device manufacturers to integrate their hardware, software, and services, enabling them to offer customized solutions to other businesses and customers. Lastly, use of niche single task robots designed to perform one specific, repetitive function in an agricultural setting with high precision.
SwarmFarm states that employing use of integrated, open architecture better lets growers compose their own systems and adapt to local conditions. Through SwarmConnect, short-line manufacturers and agritech partners can build applications that run natively on the SwarmFarm platform, widening the catalog of implements and use cases without locking farmers into a single vendor.