Kenyan climate-tech startup Amini secures $4M seed round with backing from Salesforce Ventures and Female Founders Fund
Amini, a Kenya-based climate-tech startup bridging the environmental data gap in Africa, has raised $4 million in seed funding in a round led by Salesforce Ventures and the Female Founders Fund. Climate-tech VC Satgana also participated alongside other investors, including Pale Blue Dot and Superorganism, who had previously backed the startup in its $2 million pre-seed round earlier this year.
Amini mainly pulls data from satellites and integrates it with other datasets including sensor, research, and ground truthing to, for instance, offer insights on biodiversity, soil or crop health, or to track farming progress and practices (regenerative) like water or fertilizer use. The startup says its platform enables the creation of real time monitoring tools and ML models to support insights into diverse actions including flood detection.
Kate Kallot, Amini founder and CEO, says the data aggregation platform taps artificial intelligence and space technologies to make environmental data on Africa easily accessible, for easier decision making and transparency in supply chains.
“We want to empower our people. We want to help all these populations of farmers to move our people from surviving to thriving. Our thesis is that you can only do that if you have access to data because if you have access to data, there is transparency and if you have transparency, then you have trust. And when you have trust, people invest more,” said Kallot, who previously held tech roles in various companies including Nvidia and Intel.
“It’s exactly the reason why we’re doing this. We’re trying to empower people and flip the narrative when it comes to Africa. But also recalibrate a little bit the value chain, because if you look at the cocoa value chain, for example, people making the most money will probably be the ones who are selling the finished product. The people making the least money are the ones producing the commodities. How can you rebalance and innovate that chain and bring the value down into the hands of the farmers and the people on the continent?” posed Kallot.
Amini, which can provide historical data up to 20 years, has limitless use cases, and Kallot is keen on building it into a platform that can be used to build other solutions for the continent.
Commenting about the deal, Claudine Emeott, the VP of Salesforce Ventures Impact Fund, which has invested in a handful of companies in Africa including Flutterwave, Andela and Angaza, said: “We are thrilled to support Amini, a trailblazing company at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation and climate technology. Amini.ai’s cutting-edge technology is poised to redefine industries and drive transformative change. With a visionary team and a commitment to pushing the boundaries of climate AI, we are confident that it is poised for exceptional growth.”