PerPlant raises €1M for AI tractor cameras covering 200K hectares

The Copenhagen-based agtech startup PerPlant has secured €1 million in fresh funding from two prominent Nordic investors, Rosenmaj and Østergaard Nielsen, with sights firmly set on the U.S. market. The company’s AI-powered tractor cameras have already mapped over 200,000 hectares of European farmland, a footprint it claims is nine times larger than all Danish agricultural drones combined. This investment joins non-dilutive support from Denmark’s EIFO, the European Space Agency, and Innovation Fund Denmark.

PerPlant’s headline promise is a 90% reduction in herbicide use for an average Danish farmer with roughly 200 hectares, alongside a 30% drop in fertilizer consumption. The investor group estimates these savings amount to approximately DKK 269,000 per farm annually, enough to recoup the system’s cost within a single growing season.

The real differentiator, however, is the dataset. While satellite imagery typically resolves at 10 to 30 meters, PerPlant’s on-tractor sensors capture details at just 2 to 10 centimeters. The company argues this resolution is precise enough to serve as audit-grade documentation, verifiable by banks, insurers, and EU authorities to confirm exactly what was sprayed, where, and on which plants.

This documentation capability is commercially critical. European farmers face mounting regulatory pressure to cut chemical use and prove compliance. The EU’s Farm to Fork strategy targets a 50% reduction in pesticide use by 2030, with subsidy programs increasingly tied to demonstrable environmental performance. PerPlant is not alone in targeting this space; earlier this year, Dutch startup BBLeap raised €5 million for a retrofittable nozzle-level system. Though not direct competitors at scale yet, both are solving the same problem.

Founded in 2022 by CEO Rasmus Emil Hansen and CTO Sumod Nandanwar, who met through Antler’s Nordic entrepreneur program, PerPlant’s technology was originally developed at KTH in Stockholm. The system relies on edge processing and sensor systems that enable real-time inference without sending data to the cloud. The company now employs 15 people and runs commercial deployments across 12 countries, including Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Spain, Ireland, and Chile.

Existing backers include Antler and The Footprint Firm, with Rosenmaj and Østergaard Nielsen joining as direct investors in this round. The next frontier is the United States. Hansen framed PerPlant’s value proposition in practical terms: “When our AI drives over the field, it documents the field variation, every single plant and groundwater-sensitive areas. This removes bureaucracy for the farmer and ensures that we can shut off the sprayer exactly over groundwater-sensitive areas with centimetre precision.”

This is a more modest pitch than the company’s usual sustainability messaging, and likely a more effective one for North American farmers who may be skeptical of EU policy arguments. If the technology’s numbers hold up in practice, PerPlant will sell as much on the paperwork it eliminates as on the chemicals it prevents from being sprayed.