Birkirkara, Malta-based Aquaticode has netted a USD 6 million (EUR 6 million) investment to allow it to expand the development and sales of its artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions for the aquaculture industry.
Aquaticode was founded by Nacre Capital, a venture builder focusing on developing solutions incorporating artificial intelligence within the life sciences sector.
“We see great interest in our products,” Aquaticode CEO Stian Rognlid said in a press release. “The fundraising round and the incoming sales revenue allow us to fulfill the market’s demand for our machines. This enables a transition from start-up to scale-up while maintaining a healthy balance between short-term operations and long-term research and development.”
Aquaticode’s first two products are the SORTmini and the SORTpro, which use non-invasive methods to identify the gender of juvenile salmon. More broadly, Aquaticode hopes to use AI and machine larning to detect, identify, and predict performance traits across multiple marine species to improve farming methods. The company aims to offer individual recognition, diagnosis, trait detection, and phenotypic prediction for farmed fish, “enabling clients to optimize and ensure productivity, sustainability, and profitability of aquaculture,” it said.
Aquaticode is being advised by former Biomar CEO Torben Svejgaard and Einar Wathne, formerly the head of aquaculture at Cargill and currently the chair of the NCE Seafood Innovation Cluster.
“Aquaticode is ready to take a leading role in the blue food revolution,” Wathne said. ”[Its] innovations enable farmers to produce more with less. But this is only the beginning. Aquaticode can decode a world of knowledge from an array of pixels – which will change the way fish are farmed in the future.”
Photo courtesy of Aquaticode
