Mitti Labs Raises $9.5 Million Series A to Scale GeoAI Platform and Transform Rice Farming Across Asia
Mitti Labs has announced the successful completion of a $9.5 million Series A funding round, led by Aramco Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed India, Godrej Industries Group, Cisco Foundation, Francis Family Fund, and Volta Circle, to accelerate the deployment of its technology for reducing water consumption and methane emissions in rice cultivation.
Rice remains the world's most water-intensive crop, consuming more than 30% of global irrigation water, while traditional flooded paddy fields generate significant methane emissions, making sustainable rice production an increasingly urgent global priority.
Mitti Labs addresses this challenge through Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD), an irrigation method that periodically dries rice fields before re-flooding them on a controlled schedule. The approach can reduce water consumption by nearly 40% and cut methane emissions by more than 50% while maintaining crop yields.
At the core of the company's solution is its NASA-supported GeoAI platform, which combines high-resolution synthetic aperture radar, field data, and physical models to create a digital twin of every farm, enabling field-level monitoring of crop health, soil moisture, and flooding conditions.
Xavi Laguarta, Co-founder of Mitti Labs, said:
"Growing more rice with less water is one of the world's major challenges. Demand for rice continues to grow, but record heat and changing rainfall patterns are threatening water systems and endangering food security. With our technology and scalable operational model, we can transform how rice is grown, lower emissions and cut water consumption while building resilient livelihoods for 150 million smallholder farmers."
The newly raised capital will support the company's continued expansion across India, where it already operates the world's largest AWD program, while also funding new greenfield projects in the Philippines and Indonesia.
Zayed AlAmri, Executive Managing Director at Aramco Ventures, commented:
"Rice covers a fifth of Asia's cultivated land, and the harder part has always been knowing what is actually happening in the fields across millions of small farms. That is what Mitti Labs' AI and satellite technology aims to solve."
Burjis Godrej of Godrej Industries Group added:
“As an investor deeply rooted in India, we know firsthand how critical water resilience is for farming communities. Mitti Labs has built a remarkable model that leverages technology towards securing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. This model has the potential to reshape rice farming all over Asia.”
Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed India, said:
“Solving the world’s water crisis requires bringing together smallholder farmers, industry stakeholders, governments, and nonprofits to transform how rice is grown. With its unique technology and vast network of farmer-partners, Mitti Labs can unlock new revenue opportunities tied to this transition and help build the future of rice.”
Since its launch in 2023, Mitti Labs has grown to 150 employees, raised a total of $12.5 million, and helped save an estimated 500 billion liters of water through its technology-driven approach.
