Deep Planet: Ultimate climate platform for the wine industry - US$2 million seed investment opportunity

Opportunity for

• Investors (venture capital, family office, angels) to bring customer relationships, co-development, as well as cash investment to assist scale-up globally in major wine growing regions of Australia, US, France, Spain, Italy and South America.
  ^This opportunity is only for professional and sophisticated investors.

Opportunity description

Industry challenge:

Wine growing and harvesting conventions have been perfected over thousands of years however, being naturally permeable, grapes are susceptible to environmental changes like temperature. This impact is already being felt within the wine industry with grape ripening being pushed forward or back by up to a month, and estimations that 75% of plantings today won’t be viable by 2050. These difficulties also represent a logistical challenge to businesses and result in a 30-500% error in operational practices, such as harvest times, varietal planting, yield predictions and soil fertilisation.

Viticulture is seeking ways to manage and respond to changes in temperature and its effects on vineyards, in turn minimising the damage changing climates represent to this over 400 billion dollar global industry.

Deep Planet has developed Vinesignal, that utilises satellite imagery, climate data, customer in field data, powered by AI, to model heat maps of vineyards, model vine health, model soil carbon content and predict ideal harvest times based on sugar content of the fruit. The platform utilises neural networks to analyse the collected data and make accurate predictions of these key metrics, giving wine growers and makers the information needed to effectively adapt and remain profitable through temperature and climatic changes.

Current opportunity:

Deep Planet is seeking $US2m from investors and/or commercial partners to scale the technology stack, and establish marketing teams and customer support, for expansion in major wine-growing countries including Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Spain, the United States and in South America.

Approximately 90% of product development is complete and in use. The sought investment will also assist completion of the 10% of work remaining, which is forecast to occur by late 2023.

Deep Planet currently has 70 paying customers, over 300 users, and an annual recurring revenue of over $US600,000, with a target of $US6m by the end of 2024. Large growers can save $50 a tonne on logistics and sampling, because of the detailed data provided on when and where to harvest, the quality of the harvest in terms of sugar content or fruit quality and forecasted yields.

A premium grower or premium wine producer can attain $20 or $30 more per bottle due to the improvement of grape quality, soil quality and nutrient management gained through Deep Planet’s product. Detailed data also saves on labour hours by reducing the necessity to manually inspect vineyards as frequently.

Opportunity background:

A SaaS platform, called Vine Signal, is used as well as proprietary computer vision models developed over the past six years. These technologies use satellite technology, collected historical data, climate data to recognise the digital signature of different key metrics for agriculture including:

• sugar content in grapes, which is entirely unique to this product
• soil carbon
• soil nutrients (N,P,K, Mg, Ca)
• pest and diseases
• soil moisture and evapotranspiration.

Deep planet also has the ability to understand vine nutrient deficiency using mobile camera app. Deep Planet has acquired a unique historical data set used in tandem with satellite imagery, computer vision, network models and climate data to give accurate and detailed analysis.

Potential other applications:

Deep Planet’s ability to monitor carbon content in soil with over 90% accuracy has attracted significant interest to expand the service from viticulture to other crops. The ability to monitor both soil nutrients and soil carbon is widely applicable to agriculture as other existing tools require a soil test to measure levels of nitrogen, potassium, magnesium and phosphorous. Deep Planet can provide a real-time understanding of these metrics in a broad section of production systems and applications, supporting sustainability and regenerative agriculture.

Additionally, being able to monitor sugar content of fruit has many applications beyond winemaking. Using Deep Planet, sugar content in a number of fruits and vegetables can be measured to inform harvesting times, allowing the customer to achieve optimal quality and productivity. This data can also be used to control nutrient levels in food, giving this product the potential to optimise multiple crop-based agricultural enterprises.