Despite great uncertainty surrounding Covid-19, Kubota has invested in a ‘Series B’ venture funding investment round totalling $30m for SeeTree, a technology leader in the monitoring of tree health. With this investment, Kubota is showing its ongoing commitment towards new technologies and new business with the aim to create a society where sustainable developments on a global scale offer key solutions to our growers.
Through this investment in SeeTree, Kubota continues moving forward in accelerating its innovation philosophy in order to create new business opportunities, products and services in the field of farming. The globalisation of companies is currently facing a turning point due to the Covid-19 pandemic. More so than ever before, Kubota intends to expand community-based business operations and deliver integrated and collaborative solutions, technological advancements and unique customer value in every segment of its business.
SeeTree was founded in 2017 in Israel and offers to large-scale farms a service to monitor and manage the health of each single fruit tree from images taken by drones and sensors on the ground. SeeTree’s Intelligence System optimizes growers’ decision-making processes by gathering and providing farmers with accurate, multilayered, and accessible intelligence, on a per Tree level. By assisting farmers to improve both the quality and quantity of their fruit, a higher profit can be expected overall. While digitizing the fruit farming process creates a huge impact within the agricultural industry itself, a greater impact is the part SeeTree is playing in feeding the world. What is more, is that SeeTree is fulfilling this global need with less resources, by maximizing farm’s fruit production, while simultaneously decreasing costs and resources, all while lessening the blow on the environment.
The strategic positioning of Kubota as a leader in global agriculture and equipment manufacturing, together with SeeTree, will reinforce the development of a platform for realizing precision farming for fruit and contribute to enhancement of efficiency and profitability of farm management.
Ever since the company was founded, Kubota has always done everything in its power to help solve the challenges faced by society. Going forward, Kubota will continue to contribute to the international community in the areas of food, water and the environment – all of which are essential for people’s livelihoods.
In 2019 Kubota established ‘Innovation Centre’ in Japan and Europe as a division for the creation of new business ventures, products and services. This division creates an environment which allows innovation to evolve through partnerships with external businesses such as AgTech startups, agricultural producers, research institutes and universities.
“Through further innovation, we will contribute to the world in the fields of food, water and the environment, looking ahead to the post-Covid-19 society” Yuichi Kitao, Chairman and Representative Director, Kubota Corporation.
“With our investment in SeeTree, Kubota takes a further step to accelerate innovation in the automation and optimization of the decision making process for fruit growers, helping them to monitor tree health, reduce costs and improve quality.” Peter van der Vlugt, General Manager of the Innovation Center Europe.
