Techstars Alumni: How indoor farming startup hexafarms is literally optimizing growth

Around 55% of fruits and vegetables consumed in western countries are grown indoors, yet up to 30% of crops are lost along the way from seeding to harvesting to retail.

With a rapidly growing global population, farming practices that are either damaging or no longer fit for purpose, and the climate crisis which will continue to put pressure on global food production, how can tech help to optimize yields and safeguard future food security?

That’s the question CEO David Ahmed , COO Felix Kirschstein , and CTO Huijo Kim were seeking to answer when they founded hexafarms . 

Joining Techstars Berlin in 2022, the co-founders developed software that uses AI to monitor, control, and optimize commercial greenhouses and vertical indoor farms in real time. 

hexafarms’ AI models can help counteract losses by forecasting crop yields four to eight weeks in advance with accuracy as high as 95%. Combining AI with sensor technology, hexafarms enables indoor farmers to understand everything that’s happening in their greenhouses or foil tunnels from one dashboard. 

Farmers can use this data to make smart decisions about their crops and optimize everything from disease management, to cost optimization, to plant nutrition. And they don’t need to be on their farms to do it. 

Researchers can also use hexafarms software and APIs to analyze growth conditions and contribute further to our understanding of how to better optimize food production in the future. 

In May 2024, hexafarms closed a €1.3 million pre-seed round led by Speedinvest with participation from Mudcake and us at Techstars. 

The team will use this additional funding to continue to invest in AI and machine learning capabilities, increase the accuracy of predictions, and grow the crop portfolio—which currently includes strawberries, bell peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and lettuce.

Finding new technological ways to support agriculture is a crucial question of our time. We now have all the knowledge we need to avoid the more damaging effects of mass agriculture and properly use indoor farming to nourish more people on a broader scale. That’s the kind of growth we like to hear about. 

Learn more about hexafarms’ technology on their website .