John Deere and the Austin Technology Incubator Announce Winners of GroundBreakers Austin, a Pitch Competition for Innovative Software and Hardware Technologies

On September 15, 2022, 10 startups pitched to an audience of Austin’s startup community and John Deere leaders to win a spot in John Deere’s Startup Collaborator, mentoring from John Deere Experts, and $12,000 in cash prizes. The pitch competition took place at the Crum Auditorium at Rowling Hall on the UT Austin campus. Finalists included Albedo Space Corporation, Amogy, Apptronik, Arva Intelligence, Bovi, IntelliCulture, Kray Technology, SocioMeta, Susterco, and Zinnotech. The competition sought startups building new technologies that can be deployed by a broad range of John Deere equipment that helps their customers be more efficient with the jobs they do. Areas of interest included but were not limited to hardware and software related to the sensing and analysis of soil and plant health in real-time, enablers of job automation and autonomy, display, sensor, and receiver technologies to further refine the machine’s ability to report its status and performance, as well to utilize information coming from senor and other data feeds, mobile web customer dashboard and engagement technologies (i.e., UI/UX enhancements), technologies focused on the development and integration of alternative-energy powertrain systems and their supporting infrastructure, scanning, and reality capture technology, FinTech opportunities that help customers more deeply and seamlessly connect with their various upstream and downstream market actors and technologies that support improved practices, tracking, and analysis related to sustainable, regenerative or carbon-smart agriculture. Selected finalists were also invited to a private reception with leaders of Austin’s startup ecosystem at John Deere’s new Innovation Center on South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, and received pitch coaching from the Austin Technology Incubator. The winner of the competition was Albedo, which is planning to launch 24 Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) satellites to capture high-resolution images of farms and crops. In addition to VLEO startup Albedo, the judges at the GroundBreakers event recognized two other companies as runners-up: Susterco and Intelliculture. Susterco is a spectroscopy startup using cameras to measure carbon levels in soil. Intelliculture sells a wireless device farmers put on their tractor to monitor how the machine is performing and what it is doing. Intelliculture also provides cloud-based analytics, so farmers can get actionable data about their fields and tractors, viewable in a mobile app.