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A Greefa sorter determines the grade and size of apples, and can detect internal and external defects. It also places apples into bags or boxes depending on customer demand. (Terrantic Photo)
A group of former colleagues at DataCloud, a startup that helped mining companies extract value out of data collection, are teaming up again to take aim at another industry: food.
Seattle startup Terrantic recently raised a $3.5 million seed round to fuel development of its software system aimed at helping food growers, packers, and processors improve the quality and yield of their products.
The idea is to replace the mishmash of traditional spreadsheets with a centralized platform that not only organizes data in one place but can also identify ways to find efficiencies with the help of artificial intelligence.
Some of the company’s initial customers are packhouses in Eastern Washington that use Terrantic to figure out the best way to store apples based on real-time quality data.
Other customers use Terrantic to optimize throughput and reduce waste in processing lines, based on supply and demand changes.
Terrantic started with apples but is expanding to other crops, such as cotton. It has about seven customers.
Funding to agtech startups rose tremendously from 2019 to 2021, but has fallen in the past few years. The long-term outlook for the industry still looks promising, according to a report from McKinsey.
Terrantic President Trevor Cox told GeekWire that agriculture companies have adopted many hardware-related technologies, such multimillion-dollar sorters and other machines. They don’t necessarily need more data, but rather help figuring out what to do with the data that’s being collected, he said.
Cox was COO and chief revenue officer at DataCloud, which sold its technology in 2021 to Australia-based IMDEX. Cox was previously head of strategy and transformation at Brocade, which was acquired by Broadcom.
Krishna Srinivasan leads Terrantic as CEO. He was CTO and CEO at DataCloud and previously held exec roles at consumer goods analytics companies.
Mahendra Rajan is the company’s CTO. He was vice president of software engineering at DataCloud and was an exec at Sedin Technologies.
Other former DataCloud employees now at Terrantic include Thiago Mourao and Bruno Ruas de Pinho.
Los Angeles-based venture firm Supply Change Capital led the seed round. York IE and Vitalize Venture Capital also participated, along with Array Ventures, which led the pre-seed round.
Terrantic has raised $5.5 million to date and employs less than 10 people. The company won $50,000 at the Flywheel Investment Conference in Wenatchee, Wash., earlier this year.
