European Space Agency selects Yield Systems to build global vegetable production intelligence platform

Yield Systems has been selected for funding by the European Space Agency’s innovation programme. The company, known for its AI machine vision platform that measures plants at millimetre accuracy using short smartphone videos, will combine its technology with satellite imagery to create a global visual intelligence service for vegetable producers.

Helsinki, Finland – The video analytics company Yield Systems Ltd will receive funding from the European Space Agency (ESA). Yield Systems leads an international consortium to build a commercial earth- observation based analytics service for open field vegetable production, blending high-accuracy video analytics with multi-constellation satellite data to provide accurate predictions of yield and quality anywhere on Earth.

Alongside the capital, ESA’s innovation programme ESA Phi-Lab Finland will provide Yield Systems with access to satellite data and substantial technical advisory.

"We've turned a smartphone into an industrial observation tool, that measures plants ten times faster than a human. By combining those precise field measurements with satellite data through ESA Phi-Lab Finland, we can deliver real-time intelligence about crop yield and quality anywhere on Earth." says Yield Systems, co-founder and Chair of the Board Jussi Gillberg.

The visual intelligence service will offer crop-specific forecasts for over 67 million hectares of tomatoes, melons and other high-value crops, a serviceable market of €3,3 billion annually. Beyond agriculture, the total addressable market for inexpensive and accurate visual observations exceeds €100 billion annually. Currently, high-accuracy and high-stakes industries remain underserved by machine vision solutions, which are either too inaccurate or too expensive for scale.

The project’s Yield Systems-led consortium consists of the Finnish JAMK University of Applied Sciences, and the Helsinki-based operator of corporate data market infrastructure, DataSpace Europe Ltd, and support from CIMMYT , the leading global plant breeding institute.

The teams unite expertise in remote sensing, advanced machine learning, growth modelling, and data governance. They will calibrate predictive models by anchoring satellite data to field video analytics giving growers accurate forecasts of exactly how much their fields will yield and when to harvest. Growers can package their field-level measurements into a tradable digital asset.

“This ESA collaboration allows us to scale from individual fields to a global intelligence system for vegetable production,” says CEO Sami Semenius. “Growers will gain unprecedented visibility into crop yield and quality before harvest.”

ESA helps geospatial technologies get from research to products with an 4,4-million-euro innovation budget between 2025 and 2030 through the innovation network’s Finnish node ESA Phi-Lab Finland.

Further information and interview requests:

CEO Sami Semenius, Yield Systems Ltd, sami@yieldsystems.tech, +358 40 802 0257