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When picturing a field of crops, Amazon and Microsoft are probably among the last things to come to mind. But investments into climate tech companies aim to make Big Tech and agriculture an unlikely pair.
Aigen, a company that is building solar-powered farming robots that can weed farms and collect data on crops using AI, was one of the winners of Amazon Web Services’s (AWS) Compute for Climate Fellowship, announced last week. And through its Climate Innovation Fund, Microsoft invested in three companies that are focused on regenerative farming and land resilience over the last 18 months: Yard Stick, Vibrant Planet, and Farmland LP.
Yard Stick says its tech makes measuring soil organic carbon simpler and more affordable, and Vibrant Planet partners with the US Forest Service and other government agencies to combat wildfires, conserve water, and remove carbon with the goal of creating “climate resilient ecosystems.” Farmland LP, an investment fund, buys farmland and aims to make it more sustainable using regenerative agricultural practices, like using less synthetic pesticides and sequestering carbon.
Through the AWS fellowship, Aigen will receive graphics processing unit (GPU) resources, guidance, and computing power from Amazon that it might not be able to create itself—plus some networking opportunities like introducing winners to potential customers.
“We collect pretty huge amounts of data: Last season, our fleet of a couple dozen robots collected almost 50 terabytes of data,” Aigen’s Director of AI and Software Yuri Brigànce told Tech Brew. “We need compute resources to be able to analyze and make sense of this data and utilize it for our purposes.”
While Amazon’s support is more technical, Microsoft’s is monetary. Its Climate Innovation Fund is $1 billion in total, which Microsoft uses to “support innovative solutions that can provide scaled positive impact for people and the planet” in the realms of ecosystems, carbon, water, and waste management. Microsoft’s exact investments in Yard Stick, Vibrant Planet, and Farmland LP haven’t been made public, but since it was created in 2020, Microsoft said the fund has given $761 million to climate tech companies.