Kenyan based company, Gro Intelligence, raises $85m in Series B funding

Gro Intelligence, an AI-powered insights company founded in Kenya, announced that it has raised $85 million in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Intel Capital, Africa Internet Ventures (a strategic partnership between TPG Growth and EchoVC), and the family offices of Ronald Lauder and Eric Zinterhofer. They were joined by previous investors DCVC and GGV Capital. Participating new investors include Schusterman Family Investments, Dick Parsons, Rethink Food and various strategic family offices.

Founded by Ethiopian-born Sara Menker, Gro Intelligence provides decision-making tools, solutions and analytics to the food, agriculture, and climate economies and their participants.

Gro currently integrates over 40,000 data sets and processes north of 650 trillion data points. Its customer segments range from governments to financial institutions, agricultural input companies, retailers, food and beverage companies, and various other industry participants.

The insights company says the funds will be used to accelerate the growth and global adoption of the Gro Platform, enhancing the platform’s machine-learning capabilities and delivering localized insights on food, agriculture and climate risk.

“Food security and climate risk represent existential global-sized opportunities for our AI-powered decisions and insights platform. We see a tremendous need for the market knowledge provided by the Gro Platform,” said Sara Menker, Gro’s Founder and CEO. “Our customers have come to rely on Gro as a unique source of actionable data-driven insights about our food supply and models to measure and manage associated climate change risk to physical and financial assets across the globe. We are absolutely delighted to welcome our new investors and continue to be grateful to our existing investors for their support.”

“Gro Intelligence is one of the most exciting AI companies and is tackling two of the world’s biggest challenges: food security and climate risk.  Their software-based platform will drive compute-powered cross-border knowledge to surface meaningful insights and enable better informed agricultural decisions,” said Trina Van Pelt, Senior Managing Director, Intel Capital. “We are excited to co-lead this investment round because Gro Intelligence’s technology aligns with our mission of unleashing the power of data to improve the world.”

“Gro Intelligence has had a remarkable journey so far and demonstrates the growing importance of AI in driving a more sustainable food supply,” said Yemi Lalude, Managing Partner of TPG Africa. “TPG Growth is proud to have supported the company from its beginnings in Nairobi to the forefront of today’s efforts to make companies and institutions across multiple industries around the world more resilient to climate change and climate risk.”

Through its partnership with EchoVC, TPG Growth also led Gro’s Series A-2 financing round in 2017.

“With its AI-powered platform, Gro Intelligence is solving, at scale, two of the world’s most pressing problems – climate risk and food security,” said Julia Paliare, Managing Director at the Family Office of Ronald Lauder. “Sara’s vision, leadership and experience, along with the remarkable technology and team she has assembled, have positioned the company for accelerated growth at a time when these issues are so critically important.”