Aquaticode, a Norway-based developer of technology that boosts global seafood production, has secured $6M in its first external round.
The funds will allow Aquaticode to accelerate projects to detect, identify, and predict relevant performance traits across multiple marine species.
Aquaticode was founded by Nacre Capital, a venture builder for AI within the life sciences. Nacre Capital is the company behind Fairtility, Seed-X, FDNA, and CyberMDX (recently acquired by Forescout).
Among Aquaticode’s advisors are former Cargill director Einar Wathne and former Biomar CEO Torben Svejgaard.
Howard Morgan, a chairman of Nacre, has also been an early investor in LinkedIn, Uber, and Square, according to Aquaticode.
AI for aquaculture
Led by Stian Rognlid, Aquaticode builds artificial intelligence for aquaculture. The company is launching its first two products in September, both capable of identifying gender in juvenile salmon through non-invasive methods:
- SORTmini (portable scanner), and
- SORTpro (an automatic, high-speed machine).
These solutions result from>15 industrial research partnerships and an unparalleled database of more than 3M images and videos. It has been trained to predict fish and shrimp phenotypes through machine vision.
”Aquaticode is ready to take a leading role in the blue food revolution,” says Einar Wathne, Aquaticode advisor and chairman of the NCE Seafood Innovation Cluster. ”Their innovations enable farmers to produce more with less. But this is only the beginning. Aquaticode can decode a world of knowledge from an array of pixels – which will change the way fish are farmed in the future.”
“We see great interest in our products. The fundraising round and the incoming sales revenue allow us to fulfill the market’s demand for our machines. This enables a transition from startup to scale-up while maintaining a healthy balance between short-term operations and long-term R&D,” says Stian Rognlid, Aquaticode’s CEO.
