PerPlant secures €1M to implement AI cameras on tractors, with 200,000 hectares already secured.

      The Copenhagen-based agtech company has mapped nine times more agricultural land in Europe than all Danish agricultural drones combined. Now, two prominent Nordic investors are looking to expand into the United States.

      PerPlant offers a straightforward proposition for farmers: a box on the tractor's roof, a camera monitoring the field, and AI determining which plants to spray. This week, the startup announced that it has secured €1 million (DKK 7.6 million) in funding, led by Jytte Rosenmaj, chair of the carbon-credit platform Agreena, and Kræn Østergaard Nielsen, former CEO of Danish retailer Coop Danmark and a current AI investor.

      This funding is complemented by non-dilutive support from Denmark’s EIFO, the European Space Agency, and Innovation Fund Denmark.

      According to PerPlant, the technology provides a remarkable ninety percent reduction in herbicide usage for the average Danish farmer managing around 200 hectares. Fertilizer usage is reduced by thirty percent as well. The investor presentation cites annual savings of approximately DKK 269,000 per farm, which is sufficient to recoup the system's cost within a single growing season.

      PerPlant boasts an impressive dataset, claiming its cameras have already surveyed over 200,000 hectares of European farmland, which is nine times the total coverage of all agricultural drones in Denmark, and represents the largest precision-farming dataset in the Nordics. While satellite imagery typically offers a resolution of ten to thirty meters, PerPlant’s on-tractor sensors achieve a resolution of two to ten centimeters—detailed enough to serve as audit-grade documentation for banks, insurers, and EU regulatory agencies to verify what was sprayed, where, and on what.

      Commercially, this documentation is crucial. European farmers face regulatory demands to reduce chemical use and demonstrate compliance. The EU's Farm to Fork strategy aims to halve pesticide usage by 2030, with subsidy schemes increasingly linked to verified environmental performance.

      Companies focused on precision spraying have noted the same market dynamics. Earlier in the year, Dutch startup BBLeap secured €5 million for a retrofittable nozzle-level system that takes a different technical approach to achieve similar results. Currently, they are not direct competitors at scale but are targeting the same challenges.

      PerPlant was established in 2022 by CEO Rasmus Emil Hansen and CTO Sumod Nandanwar, who connected through Antler’s Nordic entrepreneur program. The foundational technology originated at KTH in Stockholm, based on research in edge processing and sensor systems that enable real-time inference without needing cloud data transmission.

      Now, the company has a team of fifteen and implements commercial operations in twelve countries, including Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Spain, Ireland, and Chile. Existing investors include Antler and The Footprint Firm; this funding round introduces Rosenmaj and Østergaard Nielsen as direct investors.

      The company’s next goal is to enter the United States market. In a statement, Hansen described PerPlant’s offering in practical terms: “When our AI moves across the field, it documents the field variation, every individual plant, and areas sensitive to groundwater. This alleviates bureaucracy for the farmer and allows us to shut off the sprayer precisely over groundwater-sensitive areas with centimeter accuracy.”

      This framing is more pragmatic than the company's typical sustainability messaging and may resonate better with North American farmers who are familiar with EU policy discussions. If the company's claims hold true in actual farming conditions, the technology's appeal will hinge on the paperwork it eliminates as much as the chemicals it stops using.