An AI that watches rice fields from space raised $9.5 million. The Philippines is next.

Mitti Labs, a climate technology company based in New York and Bengaluru, raised 9.5 million dollars this week. The round was led by Aramco Ventures, the investment arm of Saudi Aramco, and it is the first time that arm has put money into an Indian startup. Lightspeed India, Godrej Industries Group, Cisco, Francis Family Fund and Volta Circle also joined. The company has now raised 12.5 million dollars in total, counting a 3 million dollar first round in July 2024.

What it sells is a way to watch rice fields without standing in them. It buys radar images from satellites, some sharp enough to pick out half a meter of ground, and pairs them with years of measurements its own field teams took on the farms. From that it builds a digital copy of each field and tracks how much water is sitting in it and how much methane, the gas that rises off flooded paddies, is coming out. It went from about 8,000 farmers in its first season in 2024 to more than 100,000 this season across several Indian states, on farms that average about one hectare each.

Why it matters here

Co-founder Xavier Laguarta told TechCrunch the new money pays for opening in the Philippines later this year, with Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia to follow in 2027. The pitch to a farmer is that you flood the field less often instead of keeping it under water the whole season. The company says that cuts water use by about 40 percent and methane by more than half without hurting the harvest, and that the saved emissions can be sold as carbon credits, which are payments companies make to offset their own pollution. That would be a second source of income on top of the palay.

We're really a data company at the end of the day. When you do these expansions, you're generating and gathering data from very different ecosystems.

The catch to watch

The 40 percent and the 50 percent are the company's own figures, not an outside audit, and they come from Indian fields. Philippine paddies, irrigation systems and planting calendars are not the same, and the company itself says it has to adapt the model to each one. Nothing has been announced yet about which provinces it starts in, who it partners with, or how many Filipino farmers it expects to sign. The extra income also depends on somebody buying the carbon credits, and that market moves on its own. Treat this as a plan with real money behind it, not a program you can join tomorrow.