Farmdrive, a livestock management software company, has raised £1 million ($1.31 million) in a pre seed round led by TechStart Ventures and Ascension Ventures, with support from Angel Invest. Farmdrive plans to expand its presence across Europe while accelerating development of both its farm app and supply chain tools.
The company expects to grow its team over the next year, with hires in software engineering, data analysis, marketing, customer support and enterprise account management. The platform is currently used by more than 1,000 beef and dairy farms to manage over 150,000 cattle and reduce administrative workloads.
The support we have received through local programmes has been fundamental in our success; from being able to tap into expertise to first class networking opportunities. This £1m investment lets us take our practical vision worldwide, giving farmers better data in their pocket and giving meat processors and retailers the transparency they need from – farm to shelf.
The funding comes after a strong year for Farmdrive, which received multiple regional innovation awards in 2025, including the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society Innovation Award and NI (Northern Ireland) Tech Start-Up of the Year. The new investment enables the company to broaden the reach of its livestock management and supply chain platform, supporting efforts to improve transparency and efficiency across the sector.
Farmdrive also offers an enterprise version that gives processors and retailers real-time visibility into supply chains, along with traceability and forecasting tools. Based in Antrim, Northern Ireland, the startup was founded in 2023 by CEO Gareth McDonald and CTO Gareth Gordon. The platform was created to replace paper based record keeping with simple digital workflows for farmers, while giving supply chain partners clearer traceability, forecasting and sustainability information.
‘Single Source of Truth for Farm Data’
Farmdrive is recognised by organisations including DAERA NI, EID Scotland and AIM Ireland. By using technology to streamline and improve farm operations, the company aims to become a global single source of truth for farm data.
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CTO Gareth Gordon said the company’s farming backgrounds shape a practical approach to product development, with the aim of ensuring that any technology introduced genuinely supports day-to-day farm work. He noted that the new investment will allow Farmdrive to continue improving performance and usability, ease compliance tasks for farmers, and provide supply-chain partners with live information from the farm level.
Supply chain visibility is vital to informing production, establishing an audit trail, and building resilient food systems. Farmdrive is at the forefront of this transformation providing critical infrastructure to make this possible. We’re pumped to back Gareth and Gareth – two farmers turned software engineers – who are bringing farming into the 21st century.
Angel Invest partner Connor Murphy highlighted Farmdrive’s early uptake, describing its growth as unusual for agriculture, where new digital tools often scale slowly. Murphy said the team’s credibility within the livestock sector and its understanding of a large, under digitised market suggest the company could become an influential player as adoption increases.
Audrey Osbourne of TechStart Ventures said the firm backed Farmdrive because it sees the team’s ambition to build a global single source of farm data aligning with TechStart’s focus on supporting early stage founders pursuing large, international opportunities in sectors they know well.
Farmdrive’s Path to Scale
Farmdrive’s latest funding round highlights how digital record keeping and livestock data management are becoming core infrastructure rather than optional add-ons in modern agriculture. As regulatory expectations increase and supply chains demand clearer traceability, platforms that capture real-time, verifiable information at the farm level are gaining more attention.
Farmdrive’s early traction suggests that usable, low-friction tools can overcome some of the adoption barriers that have slowed previous agritech deployments. The company’s aim to create a unified source of farm data reflects a broader shift toward integrated systems that link farmers, processors and retailers through shared information.
Whether Farmdrive can scale this model beyond its current markets will depend on data accuracy, interoperability with existing industry systems and the platform’s ability to deliver practical value to both farmers and downstream supply-chain partners.