Ceres Imaging Reveals Capital Raise, Rebrands to ‘Ceres AI’

Ceres Imaging has revealed a Series D capital raise and announced its rebranding to “Ceres AI.”

When announcing these developments in a Thursday (Aug. 22) press release emailed to PYMNTS, the company did not disclose the funding amount.

Ceres AI, which provides data and analytics to help growers, lenders and insurers reduce their farming risk and improve their profitability, said in the release that it will use the new funding to expand both domestically and internationally.

Regarding its rebranding, the company said the “Ceres AI” brand highlights its decade of experience with artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision and machine learning (ML) and its use of these technologies to help participants in the agricultural industry access quality data to make faster, more accurate decisions.

Ceres AI’s data, gathered over the last decade, includes more than 12 billion unique data points and underpins the company’s proprietary ML algorithm that helps its customers manage and operate their land, mitigate risk, underwrite policies and report sustainability metrics, according to the release.

“Ceres AI is a leader in the Ag industry due to the sophistication with which we capture and analyze agricultural data,” Ramsey Masri, CEO of Ceres AI, said in the release. “Having leveraged AI and ML since inception, we felt it was time to highlight our strengths in this area with a name that better reflects our foundation and leadership in the space.”

The company also announced in the press release that it has appointed Krishna K. Gupta, CEO of Remus Capital, which led its Series D capital raise, as chairman of Ceres AI.

“Verticalized AI opportunities extend beyond LLMs [large language models] alone, as they unlock the next layers of massive value in a given vertical,” Gupta said in the release. “Given the distribution challenges intrinsic to the agriculture industry, incumbent startups like Ceres AI are poised to capture most of the value.”

Tailoring AI solutions by industry is key to their scalability, PYMNTS reported in November 2023. AI solutions are only as good as the data they are trained on, so some observers believe that vertically oriented AI models offer enterprises the safest, most productive way forward.

For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.