Australian agtech IoT company The Yield has announced today that it has successfully raised $6.5 million in Series A funding, with Bosch, KPMG and AgFunder all providing significant investment in the start-up.

This brings the total investment into the company up to $11.5 million over the past two years.

In an email sent to The Yield’s stakeholder and partner community, the funding will be used primarily to launch the company’s Sensing+ for Agriculture platform in the second half of 2017.

Sensing+ is a microclimate sensing platform that combines sensors, hardware and software with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to help growers make critical on-farm decisions.

Field trials of the Sensing+ platform are currently underway, and according to The Yield's founder and managing director Ros Harvey, “both our hardware and our data platform are exceeding expectations.”

The Sensing+ platform adds to The Yield’s portfolio of products and services, which already includes a water quality sensing platform for Australia’s oyster farmers.

The Series A funding will also be used to mature marketing and sales efforts, fast-track product innovation, and launch The Yield’s products into international markets.

Professional services company KPMG and agricultural investment platform AgFunder are the new faces to The Yield’s investor portfolio joining long-time sponsor Bosch, and Harvey is excited to have them all on board.

“We now have some of the world’s best engineers from Bosch working on our microclimate system, we have KPMG’s deep industry insights and commercial expertise, and AgFunder’s global community helping us bring solutions to growers in Australia and beyond,” she said.

KPMG Australia’s head of agtech Ben van Delden said in a statement that the company’s investment is going to be an active one.

“Our agribusiness clients are wanting digital solutions to optimise their farm decision-making and improve productivity and reliability,” he said in a statement.

“The combination of The Yield’s technology platform with KPMG’s business performance optimisation and digital consulting services presents clients with the ideal combination of practical tools and insights to transform how they make vital yield enhancing decisions.”

KPMG Australia’s national IoT practice leader Piers Hogarth-Scott added: “The Yield is without doubt the most exciting Australian IoT start-up in the food and fibre sector.”

“Not only does their IoT platform help producers such as oyster farmers remove uncertainty and increase yield, but it is also enabling innovation in sectors such as financial services where we are beginning to see banks and insurers design credit and risk products specifically for the customers of IoT platforms.”