Growers Edge has announced the close of a $40 million Series B round of financing to accelerate the development of its financial technology products, solutions, and tools for the ag industry.

Based in Johnston, Iowa, the company has pulled together a range of fintech and analytics tools. The system combines data from local growers, agtech vendors, and insurance partners including financial data; agtech field data; grower history; and lending data. That mashup of information is then pushed through the Growers Edge platform to help identify profit opportunities for ag retailers and farmers.

Growers Edge will use the investment to continue to grow its data science team, develop and advance its artificial intelligence platform, and expand into new markets across the United States and around the globe.

“Most of the funds we’ve raised will go toward our product development group, said Dan Cosgrove, CEO of Growers Edge. “Developers, coders, user interface folks, and probably most importantly, our data science group.”

Cosgrove joined the Growers Edge team as Chief Strategy Officer in 2019 and was appointed to CEO in January.

“We need to find and attract those data scientists and use them to build up our analytics so we can quantify all these sales programs that we work with,” said Cosgrove. “Because that allows us to really look at the likelihood that our plans and recommendations have to succeed.”

The round was led by S2G Ventures, Cox Enterprises, and Skyline Global Partners. New strategic investor Bunge Ventures and existing investor Finistere Ventures also joined the round.

The majority of the fundraising effort took place in 2019 and early this year before the pandemic hit, Cosgrove told Clay & Milk.

“Growers Edge has achieved tremendous growth and solidified its position as a key market disruptor by creating a strong network of technology, agent, and farm partners in an extremely short timeframe,” said Sanjeev Krishnan, CIO of S2G in an announcement. “Its industry-changing fintech solutions will dramatically accelerate the adoption of sustainable ag innovations, revolutionizing the ag industry and our global food supply chain.”

Growers Edge currently has 36 employees and plans to hire around 10 more over the next year or two, Cosgrove told Clay & Milk.