Ross Foreman, Chief Growth Officer, Aerobotics

Aerobotics is a computer vision and AI technology company that gives fruit companies decision support across the whole value chain. Our platform is powered by our large fruit model and helps growers, packers and marketers make better decisions in production, harvest and post-harvest, from the orchard through to when they sell their fruit.

Aerobotics started with the farmer and their problems in mind. We first understood the challenges growers, packers and marketers face, then built our technology in the hardest measurement conditions: green fruit on green leaves, fruit hidden in the canopy and very small fruit. We started in citrus, which has some of the toughest of those conditions, and built from there. We also support the whole season, following the fruit from production through harvest to sales, rather than just one moment in it.

Today we support over 300 leading fruit companies and more than 800,000 acres across five continents. We’ve analyzed over 500 million trees and more than a billion fruit, and all of that feeds our large fruit model, so our AI gets better every season. That’s a significant data advantage.

We always started with citrus. That’s really our core crop. We have since expanded to many other fruits, with apples and table grapes being two of our important tier-one crops.

It was a natural progression once we went vertical and started solving for more that we could get out of an image. We first started off sizing fruit, then moved into analyzing the color of the fruit, and then into analyzing blemishes and the quality of fruit. That started on citrus, and we have since moved it across to other crops, including table grapes and apples.

Margins in fruit are tight, and the outcome of a season comes down to a series of decisions: how to farm each block, when to pick, what to store, and where to sell. Often, those decisions have been made on gut feel and limited information. We give teams the data to make them with confidence.

Technology today allows us to do it in a way that wasn’t possible before. The impact is real: picking just 1% of fruit too early can be very costly, and even a 1% improvement in packouts or harvest timing returns more than ten times the cost of our platform.

I think you really need to start with what the problem is for the grower. You need to speak the grower’s language and understand their operation and how to work with them.

Trust in agriculture is also extremely important, so we make sure to really grow that trust with the growers from the beginning. Critically important to us is ensuring that they receive accurate information and working with them to ensure we are solving the problems most important to them.

One of our clear differentiators is that our product utilization is very high. The app itself is very easy to use, and the phone is already in the grower’s pocket, or in the pocket of the operator walking the orchard or in the packhouse. So it’s about ensuring the technology is seamless to use within their current operation.

Every operation is slightly different. It’s about understanding each customer’s challenges and showing how the data can support decisions across their business.

Agriculture is also full of surprises. We can’t control the weather or many of the challenges that come up in a season. But with the right data, and enough of it, you are able to make better decisions and there is alot more you can control.

There are a lot of exciting things coming in the future. Ultimately, we are solving for yield estimation in its entirety.

We have a very strong presence in several markets, and we are growing our teams in the US, Australia, Latin America, Europe, and North Africa, along with our partners, and adding higher-value products for our customers. We are also building the next generation of our yield models. We always say the product today is the worst it will ever be, and tomorrow it will just be better. Our product really is evolving at quite a rapid pace.

As for where you can see me next, that’s Fruit Attraction in Madrid, from the 6th to the 8th of October. We are at all the major fruit conferences and have teams in all the regions, so we’re really accessible. Feel free to always reach out, and we can meet up with you.