AgZen—the startup behind a “feedback optimized” smart spraying system enabling farmers to make 30-50% cuts in chemical inputs without a drop off in yield—has raised a $10 million Series B round led by DCVC Bio, with participation from Material Impact and Astanor.
The company is also announcing a partnership with Syngenta AG alongside a strategic investment from Syngenta Group Ventures.
The funding will accelerate the expansion of AgZen’s RealCoverage system, which gives growers real-time visibility and control over every droplet applied to every leaf.
The company, which reached one million commercial acres in the US last year, has already signed commitments covering more than 2 million acres across the US, Australia and Argentina for 2026, says CEO Vishnu Jayaprakash.
“Growers adopted the system faster than anticipated. What’s been even more exciting is the buy-in from the broader industry, including crop protection companies and OEMs.”
“Quantifiable ROI drove our investment,” added DCVC Bio partner Justin Kern. “When growers can see exactly where every drop lands, behavior changes immediately. At scale, that knowledge begins to reshape how crop protection products work, how equipment is designed, and how performance is measured across the industry.”
Up to 50% reduction in inputs, without reductions in yield
Born out of the Varanasi research group at MIT, Agzen has two products:
👉 RealCoverage is a unit stacked with cameras that can be bolted onto any sprayer to monitor how much spray reaches leaf surfaces in real time at speeds of up to 18mph. The system, which can detect droplets as small as 150 microns, is linked to a tablet in the cab to show the operator what is happening in real time.
The AI-powered system can then recommend how to optimize everything from which nozzle to use, to pressure, boom height and droplet size, to how fast to drive, enabling significant reductions in chemical inputs.
👉 EnhanceCoverage, which will be commercially available in 2027, is a nozzle that cloaks droplets with adjuvants (rather than simply mixing them in), dramatically increasing the likelihood they will stick to plants, enabling farmers to make further reductions in inputs.
Actionable insights in real time
Notably, RealCoverage provides feedback that’s “very specific, rather than directional recommendations,” Jayaprakash told AgFunderNews.
“On the left is the live view of the droplets on the leaves. In the middle are all the things farmers can adapt as they drive. On the right are specific recommendations. At the bottom you can see the actual coverage you are getting when you spray.”
Once you set a baseline, he said, “Recommendations start popping up, saying, hey, increase your pressure to 45 psi, speed up to 12mph, adjust the boom height, switch to this nozzle… On average, with the same rate [of application], we can get two and a half times the amount of product on every leaf.
“No one’s ever seen where these droplets are actually going before. The thinking for 80 years has been, we need to spray a number of gallons per acre, and now we’re talking about micro-ounces per square millimeter of leaf.”
As for boom height, he said, you might think that coverage will improve if you go low and slow. “But it’s actually a fairly complicated question that factors in pressure, wind speed, the canopy, the nozzle and sprayer, speed, adjuvants… All of these factors matter, and now you can make adjustments and verify in real time if they are working. And that’s been the Aha! moment where so many people have changed everything about how they spray. Every agronomist we talk to says I wish I’d had this for the last 30 years.”
AgZen can also measure how long droplets last on leaves, said Jayaprakash. “So things like how quickly they evaporated, which really influences performance. There’s never been a way to measure this in real time in a field. So now growers are able to not just optimize for coverage, but coverage as a function of time. So those are the kinds of higher order features that are coming out this year.”
Syngenta Group Ventures: Tech is ‘truly transformative’
Beyond the immediate benefits of helping farmers spray more effectively in real time, AgZen can help the wider industry understand how droplet coverage and lifetime relate to the efficacy of every chemical input used on-farm, said Syngenta Group chief information and digital officer Feroz Sheikh.
“The ability to see and control every droplet on every leaf is truly transformative in crop protection applications. It offers enormous potential for growers to see improvements in efficiency and waste reduction towards optimizing yields and enhancing profitability.”
Growers can pay $97,500 for AgZen’s RealCoverage system outright, access financing, or sign up for a lease-to-own program, said Jayaprakash, who said the tech is being deployed on farms as small as 1,800 acres and as large as 400,000 acres, with an emphasis on row crops.
“All units are 100% dealer supported. We’re sold out for the year, but the lead time from a unit getting ordered and it being delivered is six weeks. We contract manufacture our units so they can be scaled very quickly; we can make hundreds in months if we need to.”
Further reading:
Making every drop count: AgZen partners with Corteva to redefine spray efficiency
🎥AgZen enjoys exponential growth as growers see rapid ROI on ‘feedback optimized’ spraying tech
