Agtech Calice arrives in Brazil with Artificial Intelligence for R&D

Date:01-30-2025

The multinational agtech Calice has entered the Brazilian market, presenting its NODES™ platform, which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI). 

The solution uses AI to provide insights from research and development (R&D) data, accelerating the creation of innovative products for more sustainable agriculture at a lower cost.

Calice stated to AgroPages that its goal is to "take Brazilian agriculture to a new technological level." Operating in Argentina and the United States, the company specializes in computationally modeling biological and agronomic crop data to predict and improve yields, qualities, and adaptability in various environmental scenarios.

In addition to advanced artificial intelligence, the NODES™ platform also uses data science and predictive models to transform large amounts of agricultural information into actionable insights. Its technology allows companies to optimize their R&D and product positioning testing programs, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and minimizing environmental impact.

"Our mission is to contribute to a more sustainable world by helping clients, through the power of science and technology, to develop better crops and products, ensuring that natural and productive resources are universally accessible," said Calice's CEO, Ramiro Olivera.

Pablo Romero, COO & CFO; Esteban Hernando, CSO; Ramiro Olivera, CEO and Andrés Rabinovich, CTO

Strategies

To advance the company, primarily in Brazil, Calice is conducting an investment round that has already raised US$1.5 million. The strategy is to expand the development and improvement of its technologies and structure its entry into the Brazilian market. "These are the main pillars of these investments. We want to enhance our platform and also strengthen commercial development in Brazil along with the other markets we already operate in," Olivera highlighted.

The company's headquarters will be in the Brazilian state of Paraná, and agronomic engineer Mauricio Varela will be the primary director in Brazil. Varela has solid knowledge of the local market and agriculture, where he has been developing startups for more than 10 years. 

"We already have a commercial team in place, and our next steps are expanding this customer acquisition team to help with billing and technological development by hiring data scientists who will help us with solutions adapted to Brazilian agriculture as we already do in other countries," Varela asserted.

Opportunities and Focus

Calice's solution initially focuses on biological inputs, seeds, and agri-food companies. This focus may be expanded to other sectors later. Varela emphasized that there are numerous opportunities here, as digitalization in agriculture began only about 20 years ago, and there is still much room for advancement.

"Until recently, artificial intelligence and machine learning were not discussed, so many database structures are not designed to use these models. Thus, there is a great path and possibility ahead for us to sell solutions to meet this demand," he said in conclusion.

About Calice

Since 2022, Calice has had an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and technology entrepreneurs with more than 15 years of experience in developing technologies that revolutionize agricultural R&D. The proprietary NODES™ platform enables companies to accelerate the creation of more sustainable and productive solutions. Its mission is to drive innovation to increase productivity and build a sustainable future for agriculture and the planet.

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)