Halter is using AI-powered GPS collars to help farmers manage cattle remotely, showing how tech could make farming more efficient and sustainable.
Background:
Over the past 4 years, we’ve seen AI go from a sci-fi plot point... to something even your Mum is using.
And while most of the world's AI headlines are about productivity tools, image generators, and chatbots, there's an industry we don't talk about nearly enough: Agriculture.
Get this: farming is a nearly $4 trillion global industry. It's also one of the most important infrastructures in the world (up there with roads, ports and power grids).
In fact, 26% of the global workforce earns their living from agriculture. And right now, over 700 million people are undernourished.
Despite all of that, agriculture remains one of the least digitised major industries on earth.
Agtech actually became a bit of a graveyard for new investments. Venture capital fell 51% in 2023 alone because startups collapsed and farmers walked away.
Then a guy from New Zealand looked at a cattle farm and thought: what if the cows just knew where to go?
That guy’s name is Craig Piggott, and the company he founded in 2016 is called Halter.
The product appears pretty simple. It’s a solar-powered GPS collar you clip onto a cow, which is connected to a smartphone app.
It uses vibrations and audio cues to guide the herd. As a cow approaches the virtual boundary, it hears directional beeps. When the cow is walking in the right direction, it gets a gentle vibration as positive reinforcement.
Halter claims that farmers are saving 20-40 hours of weekly labour using the collar.
Where we're at today:
As of 2026, Halter operates across New Zealand, Australia, and the US and has sold to over 2,000 farmers, with over one million collars sold.
In March 2026, Halter raised $220 million in a Series E led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund at a $2 billion valuation. That's one of the largest agtech raises ever.
The global AI agriculture market is still pretty small. It sat at just under US$2 billion in 2023. But it’s projected to hit $8.23 billion by 2030, growing at around 25% a year.
And while AI is starting to do some pretty amazing things in the farming space, it's seen plenty of shiny new technologies come and go.
The problem is that unlike other tech apps, farmers don't have much tolerance for failure. If they rely on new technology and it doesn’t work, it can cost them their livelihoods.
Research from the OECD found that some vineyard owners took three years to trust an AI recommendation enough to act on it.
Because nobody wants to wake up and see their herd suddenly disappear because the collars have malfunctioned.
Where to from here:
Most of what makes headlines is AI doing something clever... but we don't really need it.
Think: better emails, snappier images or a faster spreadsheet.
Sure, that stuff speeds up everyday tasks, but it doesn't keep people fed.
But when a single farmer can manage a ten-thousand-head herd from their phone, the opportunity starts to change.
AI could become the thing that lets a generation of smaller farms survive by feeding more people... and keeping grocery prices from spiralling in the process.
However, Agtech has promised the world before... and left investors eating dirt.
AI has transformed a lot of industries, though… so it’s very, very possible that agriculture could be next.
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