Yara Growth Ventures invests in Sabanto Ag – an emerging leader in autonomous agricultural equipment

20 August 2022, Chicago: Sabanto Ag is enabling autonomous agriculture with a unique technology approach. They offer retrofit kits for existing tractors as well as software solutions for easy implementation of unmanned farming operations. This investment extends the portfolio of Yara Growth Ventures into the key areas of farming equipment and autonomy in agriculture.

Yara Growth Ventures invests in Sabanto Ag, which is enabling autonomy in agriculture with cutting-edge technology at an affordable price to farmers. Founded by Craig Rupp in 2018, Sabanto Ag is bringing to market hardware kits to retrofit existing tractors for autonomous operations. This offering is complemented with a unique software for operations planning and a farming-as-a-service business model.

“Getting to know Sabanto Ag, what impressed us most is their high-caliber team and how they were able to adapt their technology to various tractor makes and farming operations with unparalleled speed and capital efficiency.” says Björn Heinz of the Yara Growth Ventures team and further comments “Going forward we are excited to see Sabanto Ag alleviating key concerns in modern agriculture: high equipment cost and labor shortage.”

Sabanto Ag follows a technology approach open to machinery of all manufacturers and thereby addresses a wide base of both, existing and new equipment. This is especially attractive for operating smaller, lightweight tractors in swarms which not only reduces capital expenditure but also significantly reduces soil compaction.

“We started Sabanto with our sights set on fixing the lack of labor and resetting the out-of-control capital expenses in agricultural machinery. We see a future of smarter, smaller, lighter, less expensive, and more sustainable swarms of autonomous equipment, substituting horsepower and weight for time,” said Craig Rupp, founder and CEO of Sabanto. “We’ve assembled a team of actual ag-experienced engineers and scientists, working alongside actual farmers, proving this isn’t a just a thought exercise.”

This Series A funding round was led by Fulcrum Global Capital with further contributions from Cavallo Ventures, DCVC Bio, Hico Capital, Johnsonville Holdings, and Trimble.

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