Building on over 15 years of insights across 103 countries, agriculture and food data company Cropin revealed the next iteration of its capabilities — an agentic AI platform that can help farmers and agrifood stakeholders access real-time insights to make informed business decisions, whether related to growing, sourcing, or sustainability.
Founded in 2010, Cropin provides business-to-business (B2B) data and software capabilities to agrifood companies, built on insights from 1 billion acres globally, 400 crops, and 10,000 varieties, Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO of the company, told AgNavigator.
Since launching its cloud offering in September 2022, Cropin has raised $47 million, attracting the interest of investors and companies like Google, ABC Impact, Chiratae Ventures, JSR Corporation, and others. Additionally, the company worked with big-box retailer Walmart to strengthen its supply chain.
Built on an open intelligence architecture, OrbitAI supports five personas, including farmer, agronomy, sourcing, sustainability, and risk and underwriting agents. Users can gain insight into any of these areas by asking the agent directly via speech or a text prompt.
For instance, a farmer could ask OrbitAI what the weather will be in the weeks ahead and learn whether they may face heatwaves, heavy rainfall, or frost, Kumar noted. Also, a farmer can ask OrbitAI for insight on how to incorporate more regenerative agriculture practices into their farming operations, he added.
Instead of building an AI system from the ground up, Cropin created OrbitAI with a suite of Google services, including Google Cloud, Gemini models, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, BigQuery, WeatherNext, and the Agent Development Kit. Each of these separate technology products provide various capabilities, including capabilities ranging from foundation model reasoning through Gemini to weather and climate data from WeatherNext.
“Before we brought [OrbitAI] to life, we have trained on more than a billion acres on different crops, different geographies to ground answers. ... So, it doesn’t go on the internet to search for information. It operates on the information of your farm, and it’s a one-to-one mapping. So, one farmer — one agronomist — who is learning from his farms and learning continuously,” Kumar elaborated.
Is AI investing changing?
The broader AI market has reached an inflection point, with frontier AI companies facing increased scrutiny over unit economics and concerns from a growing number of enterprises on obtaining a return on investment.
Frontier AI models can answer a host of questions, but the next technology evolution will come from developing sector-specific workflows and capabilities, improving accuracy and cutting down on hallucinations, Kumar explained. The AI industry continues to grapple with model hallucinations, where systems generate and share incorrect information as fact.
“If I have to solve for drug discovery, or I have to solve for food and ag, then it has to be fine-tuned on that industry. There should be workflows grounded in accuracy because [AI] can hallucinate. It can impact farmer livelihoods as well. So, those are the next steps. These models will go vertical, and that’s where the players, like Cropin, will make sense,” Kumar said.
The area of physical AI (i.e., sensors, embedded compute, and IoT devices) have become a growing area of interest in agtech, which can provide more in-depth insights to agrifood stakeholders. Cropin is experimenting with how farmers and agronomists can use Meta Glasses to gain additional field insights, he added.
‘We are not under pressure to raise capital’
Looking ahead, Cropin is working on preparing to launch its next funding round to better tap into market opportunities, including providing insight into water, energy, and infrastructure, Kumar explained. This comes as the data company is making profitability progress, achieving back-to-back quarters of positive cash flow this year, he added.
“We have money in the bank. We are not under pressure to raise capital, but I think we will go and raise some capital because we see the timing is right,” Kumar said. “We have not got into the market yet. We are building our own thesis, and maybe in a couple of months, we will start having some discussions around that.”
