US-based big data analytics company Farmers Business Network (FBN) raised $15m in a series B round led by Google Ventures, the corporate venturing unit owned by diversified internet company Google.
Venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and DBL Investors also participated in the round. Andy Wheeler, general partner at Google Ventures, will join FBN’s board in conjunction with the funding.
FBN aims to improve farming by gathering and analysing data from its member farmers’ crops, and providing ithe collected data as anonymised information to the group as a whole enabling members to make more informed decisions on which products such seeds, equipment or fertilisers work best.
In the past six months FBN has analysed the data from some seven million acres of crops. The California-based company will use the new capital to support an expansion across the US, and to attract more farmers to its membership base.
FBN has raised nearly $28m altogether, though it has only disclosed details about its series A round. It secured an initial $5.6m in series A funding from KPCB in April 2014, and extended the round with a $3.3m investment by DBL two months later.
Charles Baron, co-founder of FBN, said: “Farmers have been advising each other for thousands of years. FBN gives them a platform to do so with real information on a massive scale, so they can make the most informed decisions.
“It is about putting the farmers first. This funding will allow us to reach even more farmers in more crops, so they can make the best decisions for their land.”