Farming tech startup GroGuru raises $2.9 million to expand ‘smart irrigation’ business

San Diego’s farming tech startup GroGuru, a local favorite currently housed in the EvoNexus incubator, has raised $2.9 million in seed capital.

The money comes from a mix of investors, including San Diego-based Longley Capital and contributions from the San Diego Angel Conference. The Yield Lab, Mentors Fund and Right Side Capital also joined the round.
GroGuru is an agtech company founded by ex-Qualcomm engineer Farooq Anjum and soil scientist Jeff Campbell. The startup, founded in 2014, is making sensors and software that help farmers know how much water and fertilizer their crops need.

The company buries sensors in the soil to measure moisture and salinity. Farmers use the information to determine if their crops are being overwatered, if the soil salinity is too high, or if the fertilizer is being washed into groundwater.

“By having soil sensors permanently installed in the ground, then adding other information about crop type, soil type and weather, we can help farmers make better irrigation decisions and eventually drive automation of the irrigation process,” said GroGuru’s president and CEO Patrick Henry in a statement. “The application of machine learning, or AI, to this data, makes the recommendations to farmers even better over time.”

GroGuru is using this new money to scale operations and deploy sensor technologies, according to the statement. The company also said it would use the funds to grow its team, although Henry would not disclose how many jobs he plans to add. GroGuru currently employs 10 people.

The startup has been incubating at EvoNexus since 2016 and has been a longtime favorite of the organization’s CEO Rory Moore, whose family has roots in farming. Moore recently joined GroGuru’s board of directors.
Moore said GroGuru’s platform has the potential to be more robust down the road, solving new problems for farmers in addition to irrigation.

“Increasing crop yield and lowering costs begins with water management,” Moore said in a statement. “GroGuru’s approach is both scalable and builds a platform to enable additional soil analysis beyond irrigation.”