Delft-based Plense Technologies, a developer of crop cultivation devices designed for data-driven cultivation, has announced that it will cease operations after two and a half years of development and market exploration.
“When we started our journey, we went to the market (with an ultrasound technology concept in our metaphorical backpack) to learn as much as possible and start solving a big problem,” says the company in a LinkedIn post.
Plense Technologies: Making high-performance cultivation easy
Berend de Klerk and Thijs Bieling founded Plense Technologies in 2023 with a mission to make high-performance cultivation methods easy, efficient, and accessible through the use of ultrasound technology.
The company’s technology “listens” to plants using special microphones capable of capturing ultrasonic sounds.
With the use of algorithms, the platform translates this into concrete data, such as the amount of water present in a plant.
They focus on cultivating high-value crops with substantial stems. So far, they have deployed their sensors on greenhouse crops, including tomatoes, peppers, and chrysanthemums.
Additionally, they have tested the technology in a greenhouse setting for open-field crops such as corn and potatoes.
“Along the way, we validated problems our tech was unfortunately not able to solve. We had some minor breakthroughs in our technology, for which we found no large demand. For the past 2.5 years, we’ve done everything within our scope to bridge this gap. We now recognise that we’re far from commercialisation and what we were aiming for is not within reach,” says the company.
Awards and funding
In 2023, the Dutch company won the Philip Innovation Award under the Rough Diamond League, a category that focuses on promising startups founded after October 2022.
The company also raised its first funding from the TTT, Delft Enterprises, Rabobank, NWO, and the province Zuid Zuid-Holland in July 2023. With a little bit more than €400k in total, we could develop our first prototype and hire the right people to advance our mission.
“Staying true to our core values (collective growth, responsible societal advancement, and connection through trust), we’ll use the coming weeks to complete ongoing projects and focus on knowledge transfer to interested parties,” concludes the company.
