When Valeria Kogan earned her Ph.D. in 2017 and enrolled in a program in bioinformatics, a scientific field that uses computers and software to analyze biological data, she realized that her career had always been I imagined it to be in the fields of mathematics, medicine, or biology. But after the first AI boom in the late 2010s, she found an interesting opportunity in an area she hadn't considered before: agriculture.
Kogan (pictured above, center) told TechCrunch that when he was approached by a friend of a friend, a tomato grower, who was looking for someone to understand AI and help apply the technology to agriculture. He said he was intrigued. When she heard that AI was being considered to monitor plant health, she realized that much of her bioinformatics background was transferable.
“When they started talking to me about the challenges they were having, that plants have health and that health is important, and how they monitor plant health, I realized that technically the challenges were very The similarities were obvious,” Kogan said. “We want to test and make a diagnosis as soon as possible.”
She decided to launch Fermata in 2020. The Tel Aviv-based startup uses computer vision and AI to monitor and diagnose greenhouse crops infected with diseases and pests. Fermata's software works with off-the-shelf cameras and takes photos of greenhouse crops twice a day. An in-house AI model analyzes the photos and sends infestation and disease alerts to farmers through the app.
Kogan acknowledged that companies looking to bring AI to farms have struggled to gain meaningful traction so far. Although she doesn't think her company has gained meaningful market share yet, she believes Fermata's approach has helped her team gain momentum for several reasons.
As an example, she said, they approached the market with genuine curiosity to find out what greenhouse farms needed, rather than trying to sell them technology they didn't want. .
“The original idea I had was to create a robot that would move around a greenhouse, and we created the first project,” Kogan said. “We made our first mistake. We built the thing before we told anyone and it's still in my dad's garage. When we started talking to people, we realized that no one needed it, robots. It was very clear that was a bad idea.”
She added that their approach to training AI models is also likely helping their companies stand out. From the beginning, Fermata has kept its data labeling team in-house rather than outsourced, which Kogan believes has improved the company's accuracy. Initially, the company used publicly available data, but now it also has an R&D center that trains models based on customer data and infects plants with various diseases.
“We like customers who have a lot of problems because we get a lot of data, especially if they have a deadly disease,” Kogan said with a laugh. . “We were like, 'Okay, let's be serious on the phone,' and say we're worried because it's bad news for them, but great news for us.”
When launching Fermata, Kogan said he thought it made sense to partner with companies that were already selling to farms. When Fermata started this approach in 2020, it didn't make much of a splash, but that changed as AI started gaining traction in 2022. Currently, Fermata not only works directly with farms, but also partners with major agricultural companies such as Bayer and Syngenta. The company has installed more than 100 cameras, although it declined to share growth metrics.
Fermata recently raised a $10 million Series A round. The $10 million came entirely from European venture capital firm Raw Ventures. The company is an existing investor, and Kogan said he didn't see a need to dilute the cap table with more investors when it started this round of financing.
The funding will be used to scale the company and achieve its goal of becoming profitable by 2026. Kogan said the company has been able to grow without a sales team and primarily through inbound interest, but he wants to scale even further. their sales team. Fermata currently only sells greenhouse-grown tomatoes, but is actively working to expand into new crops and expand partnerships.