CerraCap Ventures has invested an undisclosed sum of new funding in AgShift, an ag-tech startup that uses computer vision and AI to help remove transactional bias in the food supply chain.
The press announcement from CerraCap was vague, saying only that AgShift was “the newest addition to our portfolio of high performing start-ups.” The Spoon followed up with AgShift Founder and CEO, Miku Jha, who confirmed via email that CerraCap had invested in AgShift and that this was the startup’s second institutional investor. AgShift had previously raised a $2 million seed round from Exfinity Ventures in March of last year. UPDATE: Jha told us by email that the CerraCap funding is part of AgShift’s seed raise.
AgShift automates food inspection along the supply chain using computer vision and cloud-based deep learning to create an objective rating for food. Cameras take pictures of produce or edible nuts and run those images through AgShift’s algorithms to identify color, bruising and other factors to assess the quality of the product and give it a rating. This computer-generated rating (based on either USDA or customized standards) speeds up and removes the guesswork that can happen when inspections occur by hand. AgShift’s technology is meant to eliminate the interpretive disagreements between buyers and sellers.
AgShift’s technology can be used with smartphone cameras capturing the image, but last year the company also developed its own analyzing hardware that can be installed at food processing depots for large scale assessments.
Automating the food supply chain with cameras and AI is becoming quite the trend. In addition to AgShift, Intello Labs does much much the same thing to help farmers get a fair price for their produce. And both ImpactVision and P&P Optica (which just got its own new funding as well) are both using hyperspectral imaging on the food production line to assess food quality and contaminants.
We’ve reached out to AgShift for more details and will update when we hear back.
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