Aquabyte, a San Francisco, CA-based aquaculture startup employing computer vision and machine learning software to improve fish farming efficiency, raised $10M in Series A funding.
The round was co-led by existing investors Costanoa Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Alaya Capital Partners, Alliance Venture, Struck Capital, and other angel investors. In addition, Aquabyte added Chandran Sankaran, founder and CEO of Zyme and Closedloop, as an independent board member.
The company intends to use the funds to:
– accelerate product development by doubling its team,
– expand into new geographies including Scotland, Canada, and Chile, and
– grow its product line to include estimating fish appetite and quality, predicting sea lice outbreaks, and automating feeding.
Led by Bryton Shang, Founder and CEO, Aquabyte brings machine learning and computer vision technologies to the aquaculture industry to improve fish farming efficiency.
By arming farms with underwater stereoscopic cameras that determine fish health, size, and optimal feed quantity, the company’s products aim to reduce fish farm operational cost, decrease fish mortality, and minimize environmental impact on surrounding ecosystems.
Earlier this year, Aquabyte launched general availability in Norway and has begun working with the Norwegian salmon and trout farms. To date, more than a petabyte of fish images have been processed and more than 2.5 million fish have been scanned. Through their novel algorithms, they are able to detect the weight of a group of fish within 0.8 percent of the true weight, 95 percent of the time.
Aquabyte has also detected more than 100,000 “sea lice,” a minuscule yet deadly parasite that latches onto salmon and has recently plagued the aquaculture industry.
FinSMEs
11/06/2019