Israeli soil analysis data company CropX has announced the completion of a $10 million financing round to support the company's continued growth. New investors including strategic partner Sumitomo Corporation Europe, Armada Investments and TaL Capital joined existing investors such as Finistere Ventures, Germin8 Ventures, GreenSoil Investments, Innovation Endeavors and OurCrowd. CropX is also backed by the venture arms of manufacturing leaders including Israel Chemicals, Lab IX (the Flex technology accelerator), and Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH (RBVC).
With the funding, CropX will expand R&D efforts and speed up introduction of its disruptive analytics platform in the agricultural sector worldwide.
The company also announced the appointment of John Vikupitz as president. Vikupitz. He will drive CropX's global expansion with a focus on accelerating market adoption of the first farm management platform to integrate invaluable in-soil data insights at scale.
He said, "CropX provides unrivalled insight based on in-soil data and is setting the standard for technologies that are simple and scalable so farmers can make an immediate, substantial impact on their bottom line. I look forward to my new leadership role as part of the CropX team to change how growers around the globe access and use intelligence from below the ground to cultivate more sustainable, productive and profitable farming enterprises. My efforts will also focus on nurturing strategic relationships with firms offering growers complimentary technologies."
For the last 10 years, Vikupitz served as president and CEO of Netafim USA, the largest subsidiary of the global leader in precision irrigation solutions. While at Netafim, he substantially grew the business, developed an industry-pioneering recycled plastics solution and managed a team of over 300 employees.
CropX will continue to expand its farm management platform, which is already installed around the globe on the fields of top farms, as well as irrigation, seed and fertilizer companies. Built on a critical (and historically difficult) data element, soil, CropX provides the scalable soil sensing layer needed to help farmers' manage and accurately predict crop needs from irrigation to fertilization and more. CropX integrates the full spectrum of available farm data insights - satellite, weather, crop modeling, topographical data, etc. - with its soil intelligence to deliver accurate predictive power at scale.
CropX CEO Tomer Tzach said, "A precise understanding of what is happening within the soil is critical for crop health and farm profitability, and we combine that soil intelligence with other key data points to deliver easily actionable insights for the farmer. We look forward to tapping the expertise of John Vikupitz, our investors and new strategic partners as we drive the modernization of in-soil insights like satellite imagery transformed above-soil insights in years past."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 21, 2019
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