Gevo Inc. acquires cloud-based ag data provider

Englewood-based Gevo Inc. announced Thursday it has acquired Cultivate Agricultural Intelligence LLC for $6 million in cash, with the opportunity for the sellers to receive additional earn-out payments. The publicly traded Gevo (NASDAQ: DEVO) will fold CultivateAI into its wholly owned Verity subsidiary to accelerate Verity’s business development and growth.

CultivateAI projects 2024 revenue of $1.7 million and corresponding positive cash flow. CultivateAI, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, provides agricultural data to clients through a software as a service (“SaaS”) platform.

Gevo expects to combine CultivateAI’s digital agriculture data and analytics platform with Verity’s carbon accounting and tracking solutions to provide data-driven solutions for carbon abatement in food, feed, fuels and industrial markets, while simultaneously helping farmers improve their operations, sustainability and profitability.

CultivateAI’s SaaS platform is a cloud-based, mobile platform that helps farm operators, agronomists, ag-service providers and researchers make informed, data-driven decisions with real-time analytics.

“Adding CultivateAI and its inventive approach to Verity will help us grow revenue by providing the most complete set of data-driven analytics services to farmers, agronomists, and researchers,” said Dr. Paul Bloom, head of Verity and chief carbon officer of Gevo. “With this acquisition, Verity is speeding up our development and increasing the value we will deliver to our customers.”

Verity is at the forefront of creating the ability to track, verify and empirically value carbon intensity across the full carbon lifecycle. By adding the tools and existing business from CultivateAI, Verity will benefit from the addition of clients outside the biofuel segment as well as additional revenue streams.

“We are constantly looking for this kind of development that delivers new streams of untapped revenue to the company,” said Gevo CEO Pat Gruber. “As we accelerate development of Verity, we expect to see these customer relationships and revenue opportunities grow as customers seek out new products and services that help them understand their businesses better. These new business elements support our mission of growing an efficient circular economy, and delivering shareholder returns by adding scalable revenue opportunities now.”

Gevo’s mission is to convert renewable energy and biogenic carbon into sustainable fuels and chemicals with a net zero or better carbon footprint. The company’s technology can be used to make a variety of products, including sustainable aviation fuel (“SAF”), motor fuels, chemicals and other materials. Gevo’s business model includes developing, financing, and operating production facilities for these renewable fuels and other products. It currently runs one of the largest dairy-based renewable natural gas (“RNG”) facilities in the U.S. It also owns the world’s first production facility for specialty alcohol-to-jet (“ATJ”) fuels and chemicals. Gevo emphasizes the importance of sustainability by tracking and verifying the carbon footprint of its business systems through its Verity subsidiary.