John Deere is the world's largest producer of agricultural and turf equipment, as well as a leading manufacturer of heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines and drivetrains. Despite ongoing supply chain challenges and a softening economy, the company rebounded from $35.54 billion in 2020 to $52.58 billion in 2022, the strongest year to-date.
Much of their growth comes from innovation. In 2019, they launched The Startup Collaborator, an annual program which serves to investigate new technologies in the agriculture and construction markets. The program provides avenues for John Deere to work with select startup companies in exploring advanced technologies to serve their customers. They have chosen eight companies for the 2023 Startup Collaborator. According to Julian Sanchez, Director of Emerging Technology at John Deere, "This year's group shows the importance of connecting with the startup community across a broad range of applications and technologies. These connections help John Deere better understand opportunities to advance precision technology in agriculture and construction." 
The eight companies involved in the 2023 Startup
Collaborator include:
- Albedo: an aviation and aerospace component manufacturer developing aerial quality imagery systems with low-flying satellites to capture visible ultra-high resolution thermal imagery.
- ANELLO: a company redefining navigation of next generation sensors with their Silicon Photonics Optical Gyroscope. Known as SIPHOG™, the technology is a groundbreaking sensor with true Optical Gyroscope performance.
- GrAI Matter Labs: develops Life-Ready AI, Artificial Intelligence so close to natural it feels alive. The technology involves brain-inspired chips that behave like humans, with AI devices that instruct machines which assist humans to act and react accordingly.
- Impossible Sensing: a space exploration company that develops and applies space technology to the agricultural industry by driving climate-tech innovations which work to help the planet become more carbon neutral.
- IntelliCulture: providing farm management software that prevents costly mistakes in agriculture by lowering the cost of farming. Their hardware equipment logger captures data from farm equipment which then integrates with their management software to promote sustainable farming practices through efficiency improvements and risk mitigation with actionable insights.
- Precision AI: is developing the first artificial intelligence-powered agricultural drones for broad-acre herbicide applications for an entire field and right down to the plant level. The company’s custom built AI technology helps solve agriculture challenges for farms around the world by using advanced drones to make crop production decisions.
- RODRADAR: offers its Live Dig Radar, a unique and unprecedented technology platform which automatically detects underground utility infrastructures in real time, providing automatic alerts to prevent damage during excavation.
- Vega: certifies agribusiness sustainability for production, impacting the entire agri-food chain with traceability, monitoring and risk analysis of social and environmental practices.
John Deere continues searching for new ideas and technologies with The Startup Collaborator to add value to their customers by helping farmers solve big challenges in the most efficient ways possible. By seeking new and innovative ideas, John Deere is working toward a more sustainable planet feed a growing global population.
Sources Include:
