Claas has announced it has entered into a cooperative venture with Dutch startup AgXeed B.V. and acquired a minority shareholding in the company’s international funding round as a mark of its commitment. The aim is to cooperate on the development and commercialisation of autonomous agricultural machines.
AgXeed offers a fully autonomous system with scaleable hardware, planning tools and extensive data models, and aims to bring its AgBot to fields, pastures and speciality crops.
“Our involvement provides Claas with access to innovative technologies in a familiar market segment and complements our own expertise in autonomy and robotics”, explained Thomas Böck, CEO of the Claas Group. “In turn, AgXeed benefits from our extensive expertise and networks in many areas such as data transfer, interfaces and drivetrain solutions. It’s a win-win situation in our view and one reason why we decided to invest in this start-up company, as well as the fact that the targeted AgXeed technologies are in an advanced state of development. This solution offers farmers and contractors concrete economic added value, and what’s more, it will soon be available.”
“This type of cooperation reflects exactly what we stand for at AgXeed”, added Joris Hiddema co-founder of AgXeed B.V. “And this means setting up future-orientated alliances between innovative companies striving for sustainable agriculture where farmers are able to optimize productivity while preserving the soil and the environment. In CLAAS we have a partner on board that believes in and shares our ideas on the future of agriculture and will accelerate bringing our solutions to the fields of farmers”.
The AgBot, along with the associated software solutions and platforms, is expected to be launched in 2022 and can be seen in action at Cereals 2021.