Founders Fund has become famous for backing what Peter Thiel calls “0-to-1” companies: companies that don’t just improve on existing ideas, but create something entirely new. Its portfolio includes Facebook, SpaceX, and Palantir. Its most recent investment is in a New Zealand startup equipping cows with solar-powered smart collars.
Halter, which closed a $220 million Series E last month at a $2 billion valuation with Founders Fund leading the round, is not a company that tends to dominate tech headlines. There is no agent AI, no humanoid robots. However, there is a very large and largely unresolved problem. How do you manage cattle spread across the most remote regions of the planet without dogs, horses, motorcycles or helicopters?
Craig Piggott, 30, founder and CEO of Halter, spent nine years searching for answers. “If you’re managing a pasture-based farm, whether dairy or beef, the most important variable is how you manage the productivity of the land,” Piggott told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “Fences are levers. They control where animals graze and how they rest on the land. Being able to do that actually makes a lot of sense.”
The system built by Halter combines solar energy collars, a network of low-frequency towers, and a smartphone app to allow farmers to create virtual fences, monitor all animals around the clock, and move herds without leaving the farmhouse. Cows are trained to respond to audio and vibration signals from the collar. This process is likened to the way a car beeps when it approaches a wall while parked. He says most animals learn through three interactions with the virtual enclosure. “Then we can guide them and move them with just sound and vibration.”
The collar is more than a bunch. Because it’s always on and collects behavioral data to track animal health, monitor reproductive cycles and indicate when individual animals may be sick, its capabilities have improved dramatically, according to Piggott, as Halter has amassed the world’s largest data set on cattle behavior. The company is currently using 5th generation hardware and its clone is currently available in beta to US customers.
“The products ranchers use today are fundamentally different from the products they purchased a year ago,” Piggott said. “Every week we are launching new products to our customers.”
Piggott grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand, studied engineering and worked briefly at rocket company Rocket Lab, where he got his first glimpse of what a tech startup was like. “Rocket Lab was my introduction to the world of technology, startups and venture capital,” he said. “It was inspiring to know that you could raise money, hire a team, and take on an ambitious mission. That’s what I wanted to do in agriculture.” He started Halter when he was 21 years old. “When I think about it, I may have been a little naive, but it was okay,” he admits.
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Nine years later, Halter’s collars are attached to more than a million cattle on more than 2,000 farms in New Zealand, Australia and the United States, where the company operates in 22 states. The financial proposition for farmers is simple. By giving ranchers precise control over where their herds graze, Halter doesn’t just save labor costs (although this happens), it allows livestock to graze more efficiently and leave less grass behind, increasing land productivity by up to 20 percent. “In some cases, we see customers literally doubling the production on their land,” Piggott said. “The yield cap is very strong.”
Halter isn’t alone in seeing the opportunity. Pharmaceutical giant Merck is already creating its own virtual fencing system for cattle called Vence, and new entrants are also making the rounds. At Y Combinator’s most recent “demo day,” a startup called Grazemate presented its vision for herding cattle with autonomous drones (no leashes required).
Piggott doesn’t seem to care either way. When asked about drones, he replies: “Could drones play a small role in the future? Probably yes, but I don’t think drones are the right form factor for the core fencing elements of virtual fencing. Collars will probably be the right form factor for a very long time.” And as for the larger competitive landscape, he argues that the real obstacle isn’t competitive technology at all. “The biggest competition is not changing anything,” he said. “What I did last year, I’m doing now.”
Piggott argues that what sets Halter apart is the sheer engineering difficulty of the problem it took nine years to solve. A system managing 1000 animals must be able to rely on 9% uptime. Because even a 1% failure rate means 10 animals out at any given time. “The drive for 99.999% reliability takes time and that long tail is something we demonstrated in New Zealand over the years before we expanded globally,” he said.
Halter is also one of the more unusual companies in the agricultural technology space. It has been stagnant in recent years as startups have struggled to persuade farmers to adopt new products while managing high operating costs. Piggott attributes Halter’s traction to its relentless focus on financial returns. “Halter has been built from the ground up around very strong financial ROI,” he said. “If we can increase land productivity by 20%, that impacts our entire business.”
Unlike most technology companies, Halter does not view the United States as the center of the universe. “The U.S. market is important to us, but it’s not the biggest market in the world,” Piggott said. “Agriculture is all over the world, and we need to get there.” The company has now raised a total of approximately $400 million and is prioritizing expansion across the United States, South America, and Europe.
But the scale of the remaining opportunity is perhaps best expressed by a single number that also resonated with Founders Fund and Halter’s early backers. The halter leashes are on one million cows, and there are a billion more in the world. With penetration less than 10% in its domestic market, New Zealand alone, “we have a long way to go and a lot of products still need to be made,” Piggott said.
You can hear our conversation with Piggott on the latest episode of the StrictlyVC Download podcast, airing on Tuesday.
