Gro Intelligence raises $85m Series B funding round

Kenya: The Kenya-founded data analytics company Gro Intelligence has raised US$85 million Series B funding round, by some way the largest funding round ever raised by an African tech startup, to accelerate the growth and global adoption of its platform.

Founded in Nairobi in 2014 and now also with offices in New York, Gro Intelligence is an AI-powered insights company that provides decision-making tools, solutions, and analytics to the food, agriculture, and climate economies and their participants.

The Gro Intelligence platform aggregates, normalizes, and models complex data to illuminate the inter-relationships between food, climate, trade, agriculture, and macro-economic conditions, integrating over 40,000 data sets and processing north of 650 trillion data points for customer segments that range from governments to financial institutions, agricultural input companies, retailers, food and beverage companies, and various other industry participants.

The financing 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 chief executive officer (CEO).

“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.”