🔵 Our April Update: Wikifarmer raises $7.7M

We are excited to share our Wikifarmer investment, in a $7.7M round that we co-led alongside Piraeus Bank, with participation from existing investors Point Nine Capital Fund III GmbH & Co KG, Metavallon VC and Inveready, and new value-add partners: sequel, Climate Club and Satgana.

Great to see Ilias Sousis, Petros Sagkos and the team taking the Athens-based B2B AgTech startup using AI to connect food businesses directly with producers across 45+ countries to the next level, evolving from the “Wikipedia of Farming” (a free agricultural knowledge library used by over 12 million visitors in 17 languages) into the operating system for agricultural trade, and introducing FarmClick: a joint venture with Piraeus Bank to digitise the agricultural inputs market - covering seeds, fertilisers, crop protection, equipment, and advisory services across Greece.

We’re so happy to be on this journey with team Wikifarmer, based on the unique position the company holds at the intersection of agricultural education and commercial infrastructure. Brighteye’s David Guérin, Partner, and Isabella Vahdati, Principal said:
❝Agriculture remains one of the most fragmented and intermediary-heavy sectors globally, with margin lost across layers of complexity. Wikifarmer’s ability to use education as a catalyst for commercial transactions is distinctive. The team is removing friction, restoring margin on both sides of the marketplace, and equipping farmers with the knowledge to operate more profitably. They have created a high-trust environment where knowledge drives trade. Combined with an AI-driven approach to automating the supply chain, we believe Wikifarmer has the potential to become foundational trade infrastructure for agricultural commerce. We are confident in their vision of a smarter, more transparent food supply chain where education drives trust and trade.❞

How can we use AI to rethink and fix, not avoid, deep and complex societal challenges? To not just improve workflows, but to eliminate the ones we don’t need?

Big questions addressed by Rhys Spence, our Head of Platform & Research, in a recent blog published on the Brighteye Sidekick!

Improvements in workflows can add a lot of value and drive efficiency. But many impressive new products automate what we have, as opposed to rethink if the processes need to exist in the first place. How can AI help us fix the much deeper, fundamental challenges at the cause – including climate, quality education, aging population, healthcare - Rhys asks, using the pothole analogy to illustrate how it is often easier to patch up, or drive around a pothole, rather than fix it altogether!

A framework for thinking strategically about the opportunities and threats that AI is creating for teams building in learning is what Matt Walton, Learning Product Leader & Coach, is providing in this third guest blog for our Brighteye Sidekick content hub.

The rules of product-market fit still apply. Check out the full post to see Matt revisiting the four dimensions he introduced in his first Blog in this series (link below) - with updated headlines and isights in response to how to AI is changing the game and the speed at which it is played:

Dimension 1: Aspirational ➡ Changing Aspirations
Dimension 2: Effective ➡ Evolving expectations
Dimension 3: Viable ➡ Disrupted discovery and perceptions of value
Dimension 4: Possible ➡ Emerging possibilities

The updated approaches all come with case studies from companies Makers, Oak National Academy, Novakid Inc and IU International University of Applied Sciences, showing what a successful strategic response to this disruption looks like.

A lot of useful information and advice, indeed!

Final call for next week’s Product for Learning meetup in London, on Tuesday 21 April, where the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Laura Kirsop will be sharing her thought on building responsible tech for children.

Laura, in conversation with coach and fractional Edtech product leader Matt Walton, will be giving her take on questions including:

We had the pleasure of hosting a ground floor full of members of the Tower - Hub & Community for Startup Founders a couple of weeks back!

Thanks for coming to our London office and letting our Founding Partner Benoit Wirz and Head of Platform & Events Rhys Spence talk about what we do at Brighteye and share details of the upcoming Founder Studio. Excellent questions for the AMA with Ben and great conversations all around, what a perfect way to do lunch!