AGEYE

This interview details AGEYE an indoor farming technology provider based in the United States. The interview is with Nick Genty, CEO of AGEYE.

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What is the origin story of AGEYE?

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This is the second company that my co-founder and I have started. Our previous venture, established in 2008, was focused on developing IoT and AI solutions. As technology advanced in 2013 and 2014, we increasingly immersed ourselves in the realms of IoT and computer vision technologies.

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We are based in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is known for its thriving pharmaceutical and medical device industry. We had the opportunity to collaborate on several medical device projects focused on utilizing natural mechanisms, such as different wavelengths of light and other factors, to enhance biological growth. It was truly an eye-opening experience, realizing the immense power and potential of these methods in delivering positive outcomes without heavy reliance on traditional pharmaceutical approaches.

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We started looking for other applications for our technology and saw a big opportunity in agriculture, specifically indoor agriculture. We launched the company in 2018 and started working on early prototypes of our platform. The pandemic allowed us to focus on quickly iterating our product development, which we could quickly test in our internal vertical R&D farm.

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There are numerous challenges associated with indoor farming. How does that affect your business and what are your personal opinions on it?

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The recent headlines highlighting the challenges of indoor farming, especially with prominent farms having to make drastic cuts, have definitely impacted the willingness of investors to continue deploying capital. I believe that we’re seeing the outcome of companies that raised an excessive amount of money at unrealistically high valuations - trying to scale too quickly without first showing success at a smaller scale. It was bound to happen, given the circumstances.

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We’ve seen this trend in other breakthrough industries, such as solar, electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cells. The fact is that truly disruptive innovation is expensive. Early companies in those industries were also able to raise significant capital and ultimately experienced the same high likelihood of failure, with nearly half failing to survive. Many of the well-capitalized indoor farming operations simply tried to do too much internally – with some trying to be both a technology company and an operating farm – and failing to succeed at either. However, we are now witnessing the emergence of a new generation of indoor growers who are completely focused on achieving profitability from day one. 

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‍What are the biggest challenges outside of market conditions?

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Still being an emerging industry, there is a lack of defined operational best practices. We need benchmarks and agreed-upon standards that growers can rely on to help them reach profitability. Currently, there is a certain level of flexibility, but as the industry progresses, these standards will become more defined. As with any technology, our AI and automation function more effectively when there are replicable processes rather than numerous unique cases. 

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What is unique about AGEYE compared to competitors?

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We’re entirely focused on providing complete visibility - not just into the health and development of crops - but into the entire business and showing growers the economic impact of their decisions. When we engage with a new grower, we examine the cost of growing each plant as a fundamental economic unit. We assess how our services or value additions impact this cost instead of solely providing crop intelligence, like monitoring plant health, growth, and stress levels. We strive to provide intelligent insights that assist growers in making informed decisions and progressing forward. 

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Customers take the hardware that you provide. Is there some sort of recurring investment to get access to the data and the analysis, License? 

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We are a complete farm management platform with two main components: Sensors and imaging hardware and a recurring software license. The cost of these components is determined based on the size of the farm. We have designed our system with a services-first approach, which means that any of our technologies can be accessed through a web service or API for seamless integration. This allows farmers to incorporate our system with their existing systems like fertigation and light controls. We gather data from all of these systems and combine it with our own, treating it as supplementary information. Wherever possible, we want to leverage the existing systems a grower already has in place. 

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How much are they investing to get the Return on Investment (ROI) eventually with the technology?

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Typically, we expect a payback period for the hardware in 6 to 18 months, but it is entirely dependent on the size and complexity of the operation.  For example, integrating into a farm that is using its own racking system will take some customization of our hardware, which impacts the costs. Compare that to a grower using the HYVE automated racking system, who we recently announced a partnership with, allows for a much more standardized installation and cost savings.  

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But it’s important to note that the growers we’re working with our seeing significant cost savings and increased operational efficiency in the very first harvest cycle. The ability to show visibility across an entire operation is truly a game changer for these farms.  

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What have you learned that you wish you knew when you started the company?

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I think it’s natural for any company to make some adjustments to their product strategy as they get further involved in an industry. When we first entered this field, we were thrilled to use our technologies to improve crop growth. As a result, many of our initial patents are focused on enhancing plant development. However, as we spoke to more and more growers, we discovered that there was a greater need to automate basic operational tasks like crop scouting and manual data collection – before any crop improvements via AI could occur. This paved the way for additional sensor and software development to facilitate this. 

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It sounds like AGEYE has a large focus on vertical farms – do you also work with other types of indoor growers, like greenhouses? 

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Absolutely – our platform is agnostic to the type of facility or types of crops grown.  We have successful greenhouse and shipping container installations, Our goal is to remain flexible and adaptable to any type of indoor environment. 

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What are some of the goals for the company in the future?

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Our focus is on continued commercialization across North America and beyond, as well as expanding our integration ecosystem with industry partners. It is crucial to establish open standards and systems that facilitate communication among vendors and enables data sharing, avoiding isolated data sets within farms. 

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Regardless of the specific type of indoor farming, the key to achieving widespread adoption and commercial viability of controlled environment agriculture lies in promoting greater interoperability among infrastructure systems and vendors. We believe that the success of the industry is dependent on vendors working together. 

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How can people connect with you or learn more about AGEYE?

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Our Website: https://ageyetech.com 

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Email: Hello@AGEYETech.com 

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