Document: FarmLink raises additional $24.6M for ag tech
January 19, 2016 | Bobby Burch
Ag tech startups in Kansas City are plowing a promising 2016.
Kansas City-based FarmLink recently secured nearly $24.6 million in investment capital for its farming technology, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The company offers a suite of tech services for farmers, including analytics platform TrueHarvest and machinery sharing platform MachineryLink Sharing.
TrueHarvest is a yield benchmark tool that helps farmers validate the impact of environmental variables to optimize production of crops. Through the MachineryLink platform, farmers can pay to use farm equipment when needed and also earn money for renting their equipment when it’s not in use. FarmLink says that lessees will have on-demand access to an inventory of equipment at varying costs, offering them enhanced flexibility, cash flow and revenue.
FarmLink has raised about $67.8 million in capital to date with OpenAir Equity Partners as its primary investor. Founded in 2010, the company has 80 employees and was co-founded by Ron LeMay, David Govert and David Forsee.
FarmLink’s most recent raise comes on the heels of another local ag tech success story. Farmobile announced in December that it raised $5.5 million in a Series A round from a large Amsterdam-based venture capital firm. Founded in 2013, Farmobile invented a device — or Passive Upload Connection (PUC) — that plugs into a tractor’s diagnostic port to collect a variety of farming data, such as info on planting, spraying, fertilization, harvest, fleet management and more.
2016 Startups to Watch
stats here
Related Posts on Startland News
How Kansas City’s new airport terminal became a sprawling art gallery for 28 diverse creatives
Every major milestone in Kathy Minhsin Liao’s life has been marked by travel, she shared, making airports synonymous with transition. “My [art]work at the new terminal is called ‘Hello and Goodbye,’ and it touches on my personal experience of the fluidity of travel. When you’re at the airport, you’re in that limbo space of thinking…
$2M in federal funds secured for Disney’s forgotten ‘cradle of Hollywood animation’ in KC
A decades-long effort to redevelop Walt Disney’s original Laugh-O-gram animation studios at 31st and Forest, along the Troost corridor, will receive $2 million in federal funding, as officially announced last week by Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II. The influx of funding should generate “momentum” to raise the remaining money needed to complete the project, said Gary…
KC’s Westside neighborhood awarded $1M from feds to reconnect community split by I-35
A newly announced $1 million grant is expected to help reestablish a Kansas City neighborhood that was cut off from itself and opportunity thanks to past transportation infrastructure decisions — part of a $1 billion plan to right what many call a decades-long wrong largely perpetrated against historic communities of color. In a first round…
‘Work to support our innovators is never done’: NXTUS leadership transition follows massive impact expansion
WICHITA — NXTUS, a nonprofit working to connect startup founders with community resources, capital and customers, on Tuesday announced a top-level leadership change while celebrating milestones in the rollout of its work to help innovators and entrepreneurs grow “companies of significance” in Kansas. Mary Beth Jarvis, who joined Wichita-based NXTUS as executive director in August 2019,…