Livestock management platform Halter has raised $100 million in Series D funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $1 billion.
The round was led by tech investor BOND, which has over the years backed everyone from DoorDash to Spotify.
Venture growth firm NewView also participated as a new investor; existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, DCVC, Blackbird, Icehouse Ventures, and Promus Ventures also participated.
New Zealand-based Halter is best known for its virtual fencing system made up of solar-powered “smart collars” worn by each cow, as well as connectivity towers. Vibrations and sound cues in the collars guide cows, while ranchers monitor herd movement and activity from their phones.
The idea is to provide ranchers with a more efficient grazing system as well as an easier way to keep tabs on fencing and herd management.
“Halter ranchers are more profitable and get better outcomes for the environment and their animals,” said company CEO and founder Craig Piggott. “Halter ranchers increase productivity through rotational grazing, increased carrying capacity, and reduced workload – while improving soil health and regenerative land management,”
US expansion on the horizon
The company, founded in 2016, has a presence in New Zealand and Australia, and last year expanded to the US.
The new funding, which follows 2023’s Series C, will fuel Halter’s expansion across the US, where the company already supports around 150 ranchers across 18 states.
Piggott suggested the expanded presence of Halter’s system could address the ever-present labor shortages happening across ranches in the US, made more acute in the recent past thanks to ongoing changes in immigration policy.
Meanwhile, the existing farmer population continues to age out, with fewer members of the next generation willing to take their place.
“Over half of US ranchers and farmers are over 55, and rural labor shortages are severe,” he said. “Halter enables smaller teams to manage herds more efficiently, without constant physical presence.”
Cattle is, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, “the most important U.S. agricultural industry, consistently accounting for the largest share of total cash receipts for agricultural commodities.”
The US remains the world’s largest producer of beef as well as the world’s largest consumer of it.
“Cattle-based products generate over $1 trillion annually,” Daegwon Chae, General Partner at BOND., noted in a statement. “Ranches feed billions of people but are constrained by traditional bottlenecks of the offline economy – labor, time, and limited automation. Halter’s vision is ambitious and impactful, to build the digital operating system for farms and ranches globally, leveraging the cutting-edge of physically-enabled technology.”
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