Aerobotics

Aerobotics is a Cape Town, South Africa-based precision agriculture analytics company founded in 2014, using satellite imagery and drone-captured multispectral and RGB photography combined with machine learning computer vision to provide crop intelligence to fruit and tree crop farmers across Africa, the Americas, and Australia.

The company's Aeroview platform ingests aerial and satellite imagery of orchards and vineyards and automatically detects individual tree-level health conditions including stress indicators (NDVI anomalies from multispectral), pest and disease symptoms visible in visual imagery, irrigation uniformity, missing trees in planned rows, and yield estimation models.

By analyzing each tree individually rather than averaging across fields, Aerobotics enables growers to identify which specific trees need intervention, reducing pesticide and water application to only affected areas — a precision intervention model that reduces input costs by 20-40% compared to uniform field-level treatment. Aerobotics serves permanent crop farmers — primarily citrus, avocado, mango, and wine grape operations — where the high value per plant (established trees represent significant capital investment and cannot easily be replanted) justifies the cost of detailed per-tree monitoring.

The company expanded from South Africa into the United States (California citrus and almonds), Brazil, Portugal, Spain, and Australia — following the geographic distribution of premium fruit production. Aerobotics has raised over $30M from investors including Helios Investment Partners and World Bank's IFC, reflecting investor interest in AgriTech solutions for African agriculture modernization. The company was acquired by data analytics firm Kpler in 2022, integrating satellite-based agricultural production data with Kpler's commodity trade flow intelligence platform.