Granular, the US-based creator of a cloud-based management and analytics platform for farmers, has closed an $18.7m series B round backed by internet company Google’s corporate venturing subsidiary, Google Ventures.
Tao Capital Partners led the round, which also featured contributions from Emory Investment Management, Fall Line Capital, H Barton Asset Management, Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.
Google Ventures previously participated in Granular’s $4.2m series A round in February 2014, investing alongside Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla.
Founded in 2009 as Solum, Granular originally focused on the development of a soil-testing service before selling that technology and its brand name to The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of agribusiness Monsanto, in February 2014.
Following that sale, the company renamed itself Granular and pivoted to offer cloud-based business management software for farmers that also provides analytics to identify areas of optimisation in crop cycles.
As Solum, the company had secured a total of $23.3m across three rounds from investors including Khosla, according to regulatory filings.
Sid Gorham, co-founder and chief executive of Granular, said: “We are excited to work with this top group of new and returning investors to become the leading provider of software and analytics to the global agricultural industry.
“We are well on our way toward the first step of getting the best 500 producers in North America on the Granular platform and this funding will accelerate our progress.”