FAA approved Guardian Agriculture announces $20 million Series A funding

Guardian Agri­cul­ture, which claims to be the first and only eVTOL com­pa­ny with FAA approval to oper­ate com­mer­cial­ly nation­wide for com­mer­cial-scale sus­tain­able farm­ing, today announced a Series A fundraise of $20 mil­lion.

Led by Fall Line Cap­i­tal, this round will sup­port expan­sion of com­mer­cial oper­a­tions across farms nation­wide and accel­er­ate the ramp-up of large-scale man­u­fac­tur­ing of its SC1 air­craft.

“Cus­tomers, investors, and reg­u­la­tors recog­nise that there is no bet­ter appli­ca­tion of elec­tric, ful­ly-autonomous air­craft than in com­mer­cial farm­ing,” said Guardian Agri­cul­ture founder and CEO Adam Bercu.

“We have tak­en a prac­ti­cal approach to build­ing and deploy­ing our tech­nol­o­gy that puts us well ahead of oth­er eVTOL devel­op­ers. This fund­ing will allow us to expand com­mer­cial oper­a­tions on real farms with pay­ing cus­tomers soon­er as we con­tin­ue to strength­en our team and ramp up air­craft pro­duc­tion.”

The Guardian SC1 eVTOL already has more than $100 mil­lion in cus­tomer orders and is the only autonomous, elec­tric, aer­i­al crop pro­tec­tion sys­tem designed specif­i­cal­ly for large-scale agri­cul­ture. Guardian designs and man­u­fac­tures its sys­tem entire­ly with­in the US and will begin com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in sup­port of its Wilbur-Ellis cus­tomer in Cal­i­for­nia this sum­mer.

Fall Line Cap­i­tal man­ag­ing direc­tor Clay Mitchell added: “Any farmer buy­ing new machin­ery today can tell you about reli­a­bil­i­ty prob­lems as com­plex­i­ty has far out­paced qual­i­ty con­trol.

“Guardian is the first com­pa­ny to devel­op unmanned aer­i­al tech­nol­o­gy made with avi­a­tion-grade engi­neer­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing, which great­ly enhances reli­a­bil­i­ty and per­for­mance. Even beyond the cost sav­ings and elim­i­na­tion of soil and crop dam­age, the first thing farm­ers will notice about Guardian’s prod­uct is that it works.”

Found­ed in 2017, and with offices in Mass­a­chu­setts and Cal­i­for­nia, Guardian Agri­cul­ture has assem­bled a world-class team of engi­neer­ing, auton­o­my, and man­u­fac­tur­ing lead­ers that pre­vi­ous­ly held exec­u­tive-lev­el posi­tions at Apple, BAE, Siko­rsky, Adobe, Tes­la, and Uber.

In April, Guardian Agri­cul­ture received approval from the US FAA to oper­ate its air­craft nation­wide, mak­ing it the first com­mer­cial­ly autho­rised eVTOL in the US.

FAA approves Guardian Agriculture’s oper­a­tion in the US