The Vancouver-based cleantech company’s pest-control technology uses sensors and data to help farms and orchards reduce their reliance on insecticide. (The Globe and Mail)

Talking point: Semios’s raise follows the close of a US$48.5-million Series B by fellow Vancouver agtech company Terramera, whose technology aims to reduce synthetic chemicals used in agriculture globally by 80 per cent by 2030. After this financing round, Semios’s total capital raise stands at US$115 million. Three years ago, the company had deployed 150,000 sensors and cameras to monitor the health of fruit and nut trees; it now has a million sensors, while reaching almost 100 per cent year-over-year market growth in California, Washington state and Oregon. The 160-person company has been listed among the Global Cleantech 100 for the past three years. It’s now betting big on data; its sensors collect 350 million data points daily, with the company touting that it has “the largest data set ever collected in agriculture in some of the highest-value crops.”