Mitti Labs, a climate-tech startup headquartered in New York and Bengaluru, announced in August 2026 that it has raised $9.5 million in a Series A round led by Aramco Ventures, the venture arm of Saudi Aramco, to expand its AI-powered rice farming platform across Asia. The round also included Lightspeed India, Godrej Industries Group, Cisco, Francis Family Fund, and Volta Circle, bringing the startup’s total funding to $12.5 million, following a $3 million seed round in July 2024.
Mitti Labs’ platform combines synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite imagery with field data to create digital twins of individual rice fields, enabling remote monitoring of crop conditions, water use, and methane emissions across smallholder farms. Farmers in its programs adopt alternate irrigation practices that the company says reduce water use by about 40% and methane emissions by more than 50% without affecting yields, while also generating carbon credits that provide additional income.
The startup grew from roughly 8,000 farmers in its first season in 2024 to more than 100,000 this season across several Indian states, and aims to reach millions of smallholder farmers by 2030. It now employs more than 150 people, with most staff based in India. Customers include carbon marketplace Cool Effect, rice producer Ebro Foods, and agricultural company Syngenta.
The investment marks Aramco Ventures’ first in an Indian startup. Co-founder Xavier Laguarta said the firm was drawn to Mitti Labs’ focus on methane reduction, water resilience, and AI applications in emerging markets, and that the partnership could open access to carbon markets and a potential future relationship with Aramco itself.
Mitti Labs plans to launch operations in the Philippines later in 2026, followed by Indonesia and other Southeast Asian markets in 2027. The expansion would allow the startup to serve compliance carbon markets alongside the voluntary market where it currently operates. “We’re really a data company at the end of the day,” Laguarta said. “When you do these expansions, you’re generating and gathering data from very different ecosystems.”
Source: TechCrunch