companies

Aerobotics

Cape Town company using smartphone photos and drone imagery to give fruit growers AI-based yield forecasts and orchard health scouting.

Aerobotics was founded in Cape Town in 2014 by James Paterson and Benjamin Meltzer, who set out to apply computer vision to a problem that's expensive to get wrong in tree crops: knowing, months ahead of harvest, roughly how much fruit an orchard is actually going to produce. The company built AI models that turn ordinary smartphone photos and drone or satellite imagery into per-tree and per-block estimates of fruit count, size, and quality. Its tools are aimed at growers, packers, and marketers of citrus, apples, avocados, and other tree and vine crops, where a bad yield forecast can mean a packhouse overstaffs a harvest or gets caught short on cold storage and logistics. Aerobotics reports having helped growers manage more than 65 million trees across roughly 18 countries, including South Africa, the U.S., Spain, and Australia, from offices in Cape Town and Los Angeles. The company has raised around $27 million to date, including a Series B round backed by Naspers, Nedbank, and other investors, and employs a team of roughly 85 people spanning agronomy, data science, and customer operations.

Founded

2014

Headquarters

Cape Town, South Africa

Sector

applications