Semios Makes Big Bet With Agworld Acquisition
So, Semios’ recent acquisition of Agworld is a pretty fascinating development.
Amid the sea of moon shot technologies, insane venture capital investment, and aggressive value overreach that has infected agriculture technology over the past half decade, Semios and Agworld are both oddities. Viewed through the prism of traditional agriculture entities, they are still relatively young companies. But each has put a decade’s worth of sweat equity into their respective businesses, making them pretty long in the tooth to be regarded as straight up venture capital driven organizations.
And they both have proven products. Agworld, an independent farm management information system, came out of Australia to the U.S. in 2014 and worked its way over several seasons into some solid relationships with some leading CropLife 100 retail dealerships, in addition to establishing itself in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and South Africa.
Semios is a company I started watching in 2017 as a real example of how to build a successful ag technology business. Its field sensor networks for permanent crops have earned the company more than 700,000 acres of loyal grower users, and Semios’ commitment to ongoing development and customer service is uniquely strong in agriculture.
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- Semios CEO Michael Gilberts says the Agworld acquisition was a unique opportunity to join forces. Photo courtesy Semios.
Semios CEO Michael Gilbert told me that the Agworld acquisition was a unique opportunity to join forces with a large, independent ag tech company with a complimentary data set. “They are farm management planning and scheduling, and we are about execution in the field,” Gilbert explained. “So together, a farmer can plan their year, work with us to execute the plan, and use the data to understand how the year went. It’s a full crop cycle tool for our customers.” Agworld’s worldwide footprint is at 100 million acres, with just under 1 million acres in specialty crops, providing global expertise and access.
The independent aspect of Agworld was also critical to the acquisition. “We are very well aligned as two companies that are looking to remain independent in terms of chemical suppliers,” says Gilbert. “We feel like this will resonate strongly in the marketplace.”
Gilbert and his team will be meeting with their own customers on what and how to integrate Semios with Agworld as far as tools and capabilities, and also sees the potential for applying Semios technology to Agworld’s row crop-centric customers. “The monitoring systems we build for permanent crops is a lot more complex than what is needed for row crop production,” says Gilbert. “We will be looking hard to see how we can leverage our field, product, and equipment service teams to deliver things like weather stations, field moisture sensors, and irrigation sensors for the row crop market.”
Semios will also be looking to leverage its new bounty of employees, now numbering more than 300. “This acquisition was not a cost saving maneuver – if anything, we are trying to get more talent and keep people on board,” says Gilbert.
There’s plenty of work ahead, but the combination of Semios’ in-season monitoring expertise with Agworld’s agronomic planning tools will be an interesting case study to watch in the months and years ahead.
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