Aberystwyth based Agxio has completed a £750,000 equity investment round to support the development of advanced data science and AI solutions in agri-tech and agri-fintech.
The £750,000 investment comes from a mix of existing investors and the Development Bank of Wales plus match funding from new professional investors.
Founded in 2018, Agxio applies advanced automated machine learning to bring science and technology to the fore of the agricultural, life sciences and biotech industries. Based at the Aberystwyth Innovation and Enterprise Campus, and the Cambridge Science Park, the company is already expanding its award-winning team with the recruitment of five additional technologists, data scientists and researchers in Aberystwyth.
Agxio has developed a number of products that integrate into a single platform. It enables farmers, researchers and policymakers to harness and safely share data, models and best practice to deliver sustainable, in-season precision agriculture for both traditional and non-traditional farming solutions. Applications include yield optimisation, IoT sensor networks and monitoring, field mapping, crop selection, livestock health monitoring, field trials, predictive disease monitoring, sustainability metrics, drone analytics, and bio-tracking.
Data-agnostic, Agxio’s AI automated machine learning solution can operate across a range of use cases and has been developed to apply to any industry vertical. It can reduce development time from months and years to days and weeks, and has been hailed as a “potential gamechanger” for disease analytics and data science.
Agxio CEO and co-founder, Dr Stephen Christie said “We are delighted to be working with the Development Bank of Wales who were always our preferred key strategic partner for the company and our plans in Wales. Wales is a world leader in both farming and technology. We aim to bridge both of those skills to create innovation in the food supply chain both domestically and internationally.”
Andrew Critchley, Investment Executive for the Development Bank said: “Agxio is an innovative technology business at the forefront of the agri-tech sector. The combination of cutting edge technology and a highly experienced management team means that the business has an exciting future ahead.
“The Development Bank’s equity investment from the Wales Technology Seed Fund will give them the potential to harvest the vast benefits that machine learning and data science can bring.”
Agxio is in the process of exploring channel and joint venture relationships with a number of companies, farms, academics and institutions based in Wales. These have the potential to interconnect the UK’s centres of excellence with Agxio’s academy for digital transformation in farming.
