en.Wedoany.com Reported - US agricultural autonomous driving technology company Sabanto recently announced the completion of an oversubscribed Series B funding round, led by Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer, with participation from Sustainable Forward Capital, InnoVenture Iowa, Fulcrum Global Capital, DCVC, and Yara. Neither Sabanto nor Bayer disclosed the specific funding amount, but the company stated that the new capital will be used to expand commercialization and dealer networks, increase production capacity of autonomous retrofit kits, upgrade AI and autonomous operation software, and strengthen customer support and field operations capabilities. Over the next 12 months, Sabanto plans to deploy its system to hundreds of new farms.
Rather than developing entirely new unmanned tractors, Sabanto has chosen a route closer to the existing market: retrofitting farmers' current tractors into autonomous equipment by adding sensors, vehicle control systems, and software. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Ames, Iowa, the company's core product is an aftermarket autonomous driving retrofit system that enables tractors to autonomously perform tasks such as seeding, tillage, and mowing. Farm managers can set field boundaries, plan operation routes, view equipment status, and receive anomaly alerts via computer, tablet, or smartphone. The system primarily consists of high-precision satellite positioning, cameras, obstacle detection, vehicle control components, and a remote management platform. Sabanto currently supports select John Deere and Kubota tractors and plans to expand the range of compatible models. Founder and CEO Craig Rupp stated that the retrofit solution can help farmers reduce equipment capital expenditure by approximately 70% in some scenarios, but this percentage depends on the farm's existing equipment, operation scale, and configuration, and cannot be directly applied to all farms.
Sabanto advocates extending the effective daily operating time of small and medium-sized tractors rather than relying on increasingly large machinery for automation. After adopting the Sabanto system, Quint Pottinger, operator of Affinity Farms in Kentucky, used approximately 135-horsepower tractors and narrower planters to complete operations. During a winter crop planting, the farm used a 15-foot no-till drill to autonomously plant approximately 500 acres of wheat, rye, and barley, with the manager able to remotely monitor seeding depth, seed usage, and equipment status. This reflects Sabanto's core logic: the value of autonomous driving lies in reducing downtime and labor constraints, allowing equipment to run longer during critical farming seasons.
To lower the adoption barrier for farmers, Sabanto is enhancing compatibility with existing precision agriculture equipment. The company has completed integration with seeding monitoring systems from Precision Planting and DICKEY-john, allowing farmers to view seed flow, seeding depth, row unit status, and input application rates while the tractor operates autonomously. Sabanto is also advancing technical integration with Verdant Robotics, enabling retrofitted tractors to tow precision application equipment and automatically adjust travel speed and implement height based on crop and weed identification results.
Currently, the Sabanto system is deployed in the United States, Canada, and Australia, with some farms managing multiple unmanned units simultaneously. Following this funding round, the company will continue to expand retrofit kit production and dealer networks, and strengthen installation, commissioning, implement adaptation, and remote service capabilities.
Paimun Amini, Vice President of Agricultural Venture Investments at Leaps by Bayer, stated that farmers currently need solutions that improve efficiency without requiring massive capital expenditure, and Sabanto's retrofit model offers a relatively pragmatic adoption path for agricultural autonomous driving. Yara's continued participation in the investment also aligns with its focus on precision fertilization, input efficiency, and agricultural automation. Currently, agricultural autonomous driving has formed two main routes: one involves agricultural machinery manufacturers developing entirely new autonomous tractors or unmanned operation platforms at the whole-machine level; the other is the aftermarket retrofit route for existing tractors, represented by Sabanto. Sabanto's latest funding round indicates that agricultural automation does not necessarily have to be achieved by purchasing expensive new machinery. For farms looking to extend the lifecycle of existing equipment, alleviate labor shortages, and control capital expenditure, unmanned retrofitting of existing tractors is becoming another option.
