Climate FieldView

The Climate Corporation is a digital agriculture company that examines weather, soil and field data to help farmers identify yield-limiting factors in their fields and make field-specific decisions. Founded in 2006 as WeatherBill by two former Google employees, David Friedberg and Siraj Khaliq, the company initially sold custom weather insurance online to ski resorts, large event venues and other businesses exposed to weather risk. In 2010 it narrowed its focus exclusively to agriculture and launched its Total Weather Insurance product for corn and soybeans, and in October 2011 it renamed itself The Climate Corporation.

The company's platform combines hardware, software and services: it collects and models data at a field-by-field level, tracks weather patterns, and produces forecasts and analytics delivered to farmers' mobile devices. Alongside the analytics service at climate.com, the company sold insurance policies to individual farmers and agricultural businesses whose income depends heavily on weather. In June 2013 the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency authorized the company to administer federal crop insurance policies for the 2014 crop year.

Monsanto acquired The Climate Corporation in October 2013 in a transaction reported at approximately $1.1 billion (SFGate reported the closing figure as approximately $930 million). Post-acquisition the business was merged with Monsanto's Integrated Farming System and Precision Planting divisions, made several acquisitions of its own, and sold its crop insurance business to AmTrust Financial Services in 2015 to concentrate on digital agriculture. It became part of Bayer when Bayer completed its acquisition of Monsanto in June 2018.

Founding story

David Friedberg started WeatherBill in 2006 while working at Google as a business product manager, having concluded that weather posed a major risk to small businesses after observing sales at a San Francisco bike rental hut slump on rainy days. He co-founded the company with another former Google employee, Siraj Khaliq. Friedberg had joined Google in March 2004 as one of its first roughly 1,000 employees and a founding member of its Corporate Development group, after several years in investment banking and private equity and a period doing mathematical modeling at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; he holds a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from UC Berkeley.

Business model

The company originally sold weather insurance and weather derivative contracts to businesses and later exclusively to farmers, monetizing by optimizing custom insurance plans built on its data models; crop insurance was distributed through agents. It also offered a subscription-style digital agriculture service at climate.com combining hardware, software and related services to help farmers track fields, analyze conditions and execute decisions. After the Monsanto acquisition, the crop insurance business was divested in 2015 and the company focused solely on the digital agriculture platform.

Insurance premiums plus data and analytics services. Total Weather Insurance plans were priced at $30 per acre and paid out roughly 10x on covered weather events such as rain or drought, an amount the company said equated to about 3% of an average farmer's revenue.

Traction

By 2013 the company had approximately 200 employees, mostly scientists and software engineers. It had raised at least $92 million in venture capital across two rounds by mid-2012 and planned to hire an additional 50 engineers, researchers and data scientists. In June 2013 it received USDA Risk Management Agency authorization to administer federal crop insurance for the 2014 crop year, and it was acquired later that year in a transaction valued at roughly $1 billion.

Latest developments

Following the Monsanto acquisition, the company merged with Monsanto's Integrated Farming System and Precision Planting divisions (2014), acquired Solum's soil analysis business (2014) and 640 Labs (2014), and sold its crop insurance business to AmTrust Financial Services (2015). A planned divestiture of Precision Planting LLC to John Deere was terminated in May 2017 following a U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit. Bayer completed its acquisition of Monsanto in June 2018, making the business a Bayer subsidiary; Mike Stern is listed as CEO. Founder David Friedberg joined Monsanto's executive team after the acquisition and moved to an advisory role in 2016.