Following years of investment drought, agtech companies have recently experienced a ‘goldrush’ moment, led by Peter Thiel’s investment in cattle management company Halter valuing the New Zealand business at $2.8bn.

But why does US billionaire Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and Palantir and first external investor in Facebook, put his money into a Kiwi agtech?

One answer is that the sector, after seeing hardly any innovation in decades, is currently reaping massive productivity gains from new technologies such as Starlink (remote internet) and AI enabled game-changing solutions.

Investors are now wondering who the next Halter could be.

One candidate is Australia’s Xsights which is focusing on the pork industry, an even larger market than cattle.

The company has a technical moat combining sensor technology, big data, machine learning and animal health sciences to create a health monitoring device for pigs which could save up to $1bn per year for each of the largest producers.

Xsights may have reached their inflection point, where they have 20 demo farms in eight countries and are working or engaged with 22 of the top 50 global producers, predominantly from inbound interest.

“It’s an extremely exciting time for our business. After years of hard work, we now have some top US producers asking us to roll out as well as several proposals from global investment banks to manage our Series B and a trade sale.” Steve Wildisen, Co-Founder and CEO.

Reach Markets will soon be opening an investment into Xsights. Click here if you would like to receive offer docs or click here to attend a webcast with Co-Founder and CEO Steve Wildisen on Friday 9th October at 11am (AEDT).

Why agriculture’s tech leap is so valuable

For decades, the agriculture sector was seen as too remote, too traditional and too difficult to digitise.

However, the recent availability of AI, falling prices of sensors, and remote internet connectivity have created a perfect environment for new technologies to enter the space and create vast productivity gains.

The result is an industry jumping straight from traditional, often paper-based methods to live, real-time data, skipping decades of gradual progress in one leap. Losses once accepted as a cost of doing business can now be seen, measured and reduced, generating massive profit savings in a sector usually known for tight margins.

The gains in agriculture are far larger than in industries where technology arrived in small increments. As new technologies get rolled out, agtech companies can benefit from these gains, which is why investors like tech billionaire Peter Thiel are paying attention.

Click here to join a webcast with Xsights Co-Founder and CEO Steve Wildisen on Friday 9th October at 11am (AEDT), where he will explain why AI could transform one of the world’s largest and least digitised industries.

Xsights: transforming an industry begging for innovation

While Halter focuses on ‘wearable technology’ for cattle to create virtual fencing in open spaces, Australia’s Xsights has focused on pigs, solving very different problems in an even larger market.

The global pork industry is worth around $300 billion a year, and the world produces almost twice as much pork as beef.

But the nature of pig farming also creates very different challenges than cattle. Pigs are kept indoors in large barns, in large numbers, with fewer skilled workers to look after them.

Disease plays a much more important role and 16% of pigs born on a farm don’t even make it to slaughter due to undetected disease, an astonishing amount of waste. Together these problems contribute to an estimated $50 billion loss for the industry every year.

Xsights set out to solve this by creating a ‘Fitbit for pigs’ which combines hardware, machine learning, big data and animal health sciences to deliver real-time alerts, reports and task-list workflows directly to farm staff.

It replaces an industry norm of managing millions of animals with paper records, manual checks, spraycan tagging and gut feel. With Xsights, every animal is monitored around the clock, and its activity and temperature are measured every second of the day so farm staff know exactly which sows to breed today and which animals need attention right now.

For a global industry major, the savings could be over $1bn in annual costs.

Join us on Friday 9th October at 11am (AEDT) for a Live Investor Briefing with Steve Wildisen, Co-Founder and CEO of Xsights, where he will explain how their big data/machine learning technology potentially helps producers save billions every year. Click here to book your spot.

Xsight is at a key inflection point

Xsights could be the catalyst for the biggest change the pork industry has seen in 40 years.

The company now operates 20 demo farms across eight countries and have shown results in pig management in real-life settings that have resulted in higher production rates and staff reduction worth millions of dollars.

Based on this recent trial, one of the largest US producers is working with Xsights to scale the technology out across its farms, with three further US parties close behind.

Globally, Xsights is in discussion with 22 of the top 50 global producers, including Seaboard, one of the largest US pork producers, who have seen great commercial results and are looking to scale in 2027.

This traction is why several of the world’s largest investment banks are already pitching to Xsights, as it aims for a larger Series B raise in 2027, before targeting a trade sale to large pig operators, big pharma or agri businesses, who compete fiercely with each other for market share.

This is an opportunity to back an Australian company at the forefront of a global industry transformation, as it plans its move from trials to commercial scale. Click here to request offer documents or click here to book into the upcoming webcast on Friday 9th October at 11am (AEDT).

Reach Markets have been engaged by Xsights Digital Pty Ltd and will receive fees for its role in managing this offer based on the uptake by investors.

Reach Wholesale Nominees Pty Ltd, a related entity of Reach Markets, holds shares and options in Xsights Digital Pty Ltd.

‘