Voice AI agriculture start-up Tellia has raised $5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Revent, with participation from Grey Silo Ventures, Grey Silo Ventures, Jeriko and Fund F.
The San Francisco and Paris-based company has built a voice-first AI assistant designed to help farmers, agronomists and field teams record observations, interventions and operational information using natural language rather than forms or spreadsheets.
Users can submit information through phone calls, voice notes, SMS, WhatsApp or email. Tellia then converts those conversations into structured records linked to specific fields, crops, plots, crews and operations.
Tackling agriculture’s data capture problem
The company believes it is solving one of agriculture’s most persistent technology challenges: getting information from the field into digital systems in a way that does not create additional work for users.
“The competition is a notebook and a group chat,” CEO and co-founder Coline Labadie told AgNavigator.
“Most growers, including very large operations, still run no farm management software at all. Previous tools asked the field to adapt to the software. A form, a drop-down menu, a password, an app to download. The value went to the office and the work stayed with the person in the field.”
What farmers and agronomists are actually recording
According to Labadie, field observations are the most common type of information being captured through Tellia.
“The field observation, what was seen on a plot, at what stage, and what to do about it, is the entry that was hardest to capture before because it happens standing in the crop,” she said.
Spray records, intervention logs, crew activities, reminders and equipment issues are also frequently recorded through the platform.
The precise use case varies by geography. In California, where Tellia first launched in autumn 2025, crop advisers use it to create scouting notes and recommendations for specialty crop growers. In Europe, the same workflow is often handled by field technicians creating visit reports.
“Same information, different job title,” said Labadie.
From vineyard tours to seed trials
The practical applications span multiple sectors.
One customer, a frozen vegetable producer organisation in northern France representing around 234 growers, uses Tellia to document field visits. Technicians speak observations directly from the field, recording crop stage, issues identified and advice given to growers. Tellia automatically creates a structured record, adding GPS coordinates, timestamps and local weather information.
Another deployment at a German seed company enables research station staff in Germany and France, alongside seed production teams in Italy, to document field trials in German, French, Italian and English. Spray applications and pest observations are automatically translated into standardised trial records compatible with the company’s central platform.
In the wine sector, an organic producer group in southern France uses the software for vineyard inspections, spray registers and vinification records.
Labadie described a typical vineyard tour in which a manager records a WhatsApp voice note describing downy mildew levels, crop condition and planned interventions. Tellia converts the commentary into a structured observation report, automatically attaching location, weather and photographic data where available.
“The manager never opens a form,” she said.
Turning observations into action
While Tellia captures data, Labadie emphasises that the software is not intended to replace agronomic expertise.
“Tellia does not diagnose. The agronomist does,” she said.
“What changes is the time between the observation and the action.”
One example involves crop advisers monitoring insect trap counts across approximately 60 growers. Scouts record pest counts verbally while in the field. Tellia consolidates the data into a single database, combines it with local weather information and highlights unusual trends.
The result, said Labadie, is earlier visibility of emerging pest pressure and more timely decision-making around treatment windows.
“The counts existed before, in a spreadsheet read too late. Now the reading arrives the next morning.”
Building habits and replacing notebooks
Labadie believes the company’s early traction stems from reducing friction rather than adding functionality.
Tellia reports more than 80% daily active usage among field teams within two months of onboarding and says the platform is now used across 400,000 hectares in the US and Europe.
Some customers have already abandoned paper records for routine field notes, although Labadie acknowledges behavioural change takes time.
“A notebook does not disappear on day one. It disappears when the habit is built,” she said.
Importantly, Tellia still accommodates traditional workflows. Users can photograph handwritten notes and upload them later, allowing the AI to extract and structure the information automatically.
“The whole point of Tellia is to eliminate digitisation frictions by finding users wherever they prefer to be. You prefer to stick to your pen but still need to input your notes into systems? No problem, Tellia can do the grunt retyping work.”
Why investors are paying attention
For investors, the attraction lies not simply in voice recognition technology but in Tellia’s potential to become a foundational data layer for agricultural operations.
The company has already secured deployments with organisations including Campos Brothers Farms, Duckhorn wineries, Institut Français de la Vigne et du Vin (IFV), Val de Gascogne and KWS Saat.
Revent general partner Otto Birnbaum believes the platform addresses one of the sector’s biggest bottlenecks.
“We believe that the voice-first approach will lead the agricultural sector into the new agentic data age and that Tellia will be the category-defining company here,” he said.
“Tellia is creating the critical data layer to meaningfully improve efficiencies and productivity in the agricultural sector.”
The new funding will support expansion across both sides of the Atlantic and further development of Tellia’s AI-powered data capture and decision-support capabilities.
For a sector where many digital tools have failed to gain sustained engagement, the company’s wager is a simple one: farm software should be as easy to use as making a phone call.
