Who would have thought that putting an AI collar on a cow could give rise to a unicorn company valued at $1 billion? The New Zealand company Halter did just that. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of how Halter solves the pain points of traditional animal husbandry with this seemingly simple intelligent hardware, and rises against the trend in the field of agricultural and animal husbandry technology where capital is cold, as well as the unique technical logic and business strategy behind it.
Who would have thought that wearing a collar on a cow could also become a unicorn?
This is not a joke, but a true story about Halter, a New Zealand unicorn.
It relies on a smart collar to make cows “obedient”, save people in pastures, and increase milk production, which has become a rare deterministic business in the eyes of capital at the moment when there is a shortage of labor in the global agricultural and animal husbandry industry.
In traditional ranches, the management of each cow relies on manpower and experience. Halter allows the cows to “speak” by themselves – by tracking movement, rumination, estrus, and abnormal behavior in real time, AI automatically predicts diseases, optimizes rotational grazing, and turns the original daily job of riding a motorcycle to drive cattle into a few seconds on the app.
Not only does it replace the fence and save labor, but it also uses the hard data of “saving 40 hours of labor per week, increasing output by 25%, and ROI up to 50 times” to set an example for the entire industry: AI that can help customers make money, even if it is put on the cow’s neck, is also qualified to collect rent.
Recently, Halter raised $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion, making it one of the brightest unicorns in New Zealand’s tech scene.
Today, let’s take a look at this different smart hardware business.
01 “Oura” for cows
By 2025, venture capital in agriculture and animal husbandry technology will be weak, but the field of robots and intelligent field equipment will buck the trend and continue to be the highlight of capital attention.
Behind this is that farmers are suffering from a series of problems: the global shortage of agricultural and animal husbandry workers, rising costs, and at the same time, consumers are highly concerned about sustainable development.
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Among them, the pain points of animal husbandry management are particularly prominent: traditional fences are expensive and inflexible, and they are very harmful to the turf environment. To make matters worse, herd health management relies heavily on manual observation and is prone to missing the best time to intervene.
If the Oura ring is to optimize the quality of life of the individual, the Halter collar is to optimize the quality of life of the herd, thereby improving the efficiency of animal husbandry.
New Zealand company Halter’s solution: through the combination of “AI collar + solar tower + mobile APP”, it creates a virtual fence and remote herd management platform for ranchers.
With just a few taps on the app, users can set virtual grazing boundaries, plan rotational grazing routes, and monitor each cow’s health metrics in real time.
In the past, he rode a motorcycle to drive cattle for 3 hours a day, but now with a little mobile phone, the cattle automatically move to fresh pastures.
So, how does a virtual fence work? At its core, it lies in the intelligent guidance of the collar.
When the cow approaches the virtual boundary, the collar emits a progressive audio warning or a very slight electrical pulse (its intensity is 0.18 joules, about 1% of the traditional grid), interrupted by a precise kg/DM setting per cow, combined with motion sensors to drive the herd to move.
The vast majority of cows adapt quickly to the system within a day, significantly improving the predictability and control of follow-up actions (source: Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture).
The value of this system goes far beyond replacing fences.
Halter data shows that farms of different sizes can save an average of 20-40 hours of labor per week and reduce labor requirements by 30%; At the same time, the carrying capacity of the pasture is increased by 25%, and the milk production is increased, bringing a return on investment of 30-50 times. Precise rotational grazing management also reduces excessive nitrogen fertilizer application and reduces environmental impact.
Farmer James Parsons in the northern region achieved a 21% jump in pasture utilization in the first month of application; The 456 dairy farms in Fengsheng Bay save 3 hours of labor every day in rotation grazing alone.
The deeper technological breakthrough stems from its AI analysis engine, Cowgorithm™.
The system continuously learns the movement, rumination and rest data collected by the collar to identify behavioral anomalies (such as calving signs, early symptoms of illness or stress responses) and automatically push early warnings. It can generate real-time pasture optimization recommendations, such as “Paddock 3 is undergrazed, rotation recommended” or “78 cows are not moving with the herd”, escalating reactive response to proactive decision support.
Mat Hocken of Manawatu Dairy said his 920-head farm has significantly reduced lameness rates with Halter, and disease detection is days earlier.
In this seemingly niche market, Halter actually faces fierce competition, with companies such as Agersens and Vence offering virtual fencing and remote herd control capabilities. Compared with them, Halter has more obvious advantages in fine management:
Self-developed algorithm + solar signal tower reduces dependence on cellular network and adapts to remote ranch environment;
Deeply integrated management functions, such as health warning and forage analysis.
02 Cats, dogs, flowers and plants can be used, and the vertical scene of AI hardware breaks through
How does Halter create a whirlwind of “AI collars” among a group of the most practical herders?
1) Tell the first batch of user cases as “the matter of Lao Wang next door”
Halter’s first users were just a dozen, but the company made each of them into a small documentary:
The Sherrie couple in Abundance Bay settled accounts for the camera: “The time saved is enough to pick up the children from school”;
A rancher in Manawatu posted a screenshot of a 50% drop in the lameness rate to a Facebook farm group with the caption “Data arrives before veterinarians”.
There is not a single bold word in these films, but they fall on the pain points of herders who “work less overtime and produce more milk”. Halter then produced a 30s small video delivery, and the young ranch manager could see his peers appear when he swiped his mobile phone.
2) Try first and buy later”, let the waiter raise 50 heads first
Halter’s sales representative drove the pickup into the ranch and took out 50 collars and declared, “Free to install and free to disassemble, after 30 days you don’t think it’s worth it, I’ll take it as it is.” During the probation period, the system pushes text messages on the number of cattle in heat and rotation grazing every day.
A week later, most herders will take the initiative to ask for the remaining 300 to be loaded.
3) ROI calculator to translate technical slang into cash returns
Halter’s brochure has no esoteric algorithmic terms, just three lines of bold numbers: ranch utilization +25%, labor time -3 hours/day, lameness rate -50%.
The company puts this set of ROI calculators on the homepage of the official website, and herders enter relevant information to immediately get a prediction of how much money they save in a year. Once the numbers match their own ledgers, even the most conservative herders are willing to pay their credit cards.
4) Let cooperatives and banks endorse together
Most dairy farmers in New Zealand sell their milk to Fonterra and use ANZ for loans. Halter has signed cooperation agreements with these two companies:
Fonterra connected Halter’s sketch utilization data to its own “sustainable pasture” rating, exchanging high scores for premium contracts;
ANZ has launched the “Halter Special Loan”, which offers a 0.5% interest rate discount on the installation of collars.
Overnight, the herdsmen who had been on the sidelines discovered that installing Halter could not only make more money, but also borrow money cheaply – technology marketing became financial leverage.
Interestingly, in 2024, Halter will land in the United States, and the advertising slogan will only change one place name: “California dairy farmers save 3 hours a day”.
The company first rented a 300-acre demonstration ranch in Tulare County, California, to recreate New Zealand’s Demo Day, and then invited students from Caltech State University to shoot a short video: “A Day in the Life of a Post-00s Ranch Manager”.
The same trial routine, ROI calculator, and recommended cashback, except that the SMS reminder has changed from English to Spanish. Three months later, California’s largest dairy cooperative added Halter to its “Recommended Technology List,” replicating New Zealand’s path to financial leverage.
A collar system can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but Halter breaks it down into a $7 per cow per month subscription fee, including hardware, software, and repairs. Herdsmen are no longer worried about outdated equipment, but just hire an extra “digital cowboy” who doesn’t rest 24 hours a day.
I have to say that the founder of Halter, as a child who grew up on a New Zealand ranch, still knows the villagers too well.
Founded in New Zealand in 2016 by Craig Piggott, a former mechanical engineer at Rocket Lab, Halter today employs more than 200 people in New Zealand, Australia and the United States and manages 200,000 cattle in partnership with 150 ranchers in 18 states.
It will use the funds from the new round of financing to accelerate its expansion in the United States, targeting the 90 million beef cattle stock in the United States.
From livestock behavior management to crop growth optimization, a batch of innovative hardware focusing on vertical scenarios is rapidly emerging. These devices have three technical commonalities:
(1) Digitization of the physical world: transforming animal physiology or plant state into analyzable data through sensors;
(2) Edge intelligent decision-making: processing high-value information (such as early disease signals) in real time on the device side;
(3) Lightweight human-computer interaction: serve agricultural practitioners in low-threshold ways such as APP and voice.
Let’s take a look at some specific cases:
(1) For dairy cows and beef cattle on pastures
[Camera + Gait Analysis CattleEye (acquired by EA)] focuses on cattle lameness and gait analysis, without wearable devices, by deploying cameras to capture pictures, combined with deep learning algorithms, real-time analysis of its walking posture, cadence and other characteristics. The product monitors more than 150,000 cattle, and the company’s annual revenue is about $1.7 million.
【Swallowing AI Hardware Moonsyst】Built-in sensors can monitor body temperature and activity behavior, automatically warn when abnormalities are detected, and can analyze data with AI. Approximately $420,000 has been raised.
【AI Early Disease Detection Platform Connecterra】Compatible with wearable devices, through integrated analysis of animal activity, physiological indicators and other information, disease signs can be identified in advance.
【Quantified Ag (acquired by Merck)】Based on vision technology and AI algorithms, it can automatically flag signs such as cough and shortness of breath.
(2) Used for pet cats and dogs
【AI Pet Talking Button FluentPet Connec】A button-based communication board that integrates large models to interpret button combinations and generate richer language or responses. In May this year, e-commerce completed 1,483 orders, with revenue of about $107,000.
【Automatic Dog Training Cabin Companion.ai】Fixed equipment with camera, snack dispenser, speaker. AI can generate personalized training plans, routines, and even voice responses to interact with pets based on real-time behavior for $49 per month. The company has raised $14 million in venture capital.
(3) Used in planting industry
[Blue and White Autonomous Tractor Model Fieldin] upgrades traditional tractors to intelligent robots with highly autonomous decision-making capabilities, and has successfully operated for more than 50,000 hours in 150,000 acres of orchards in California and Washington state, covering a variety of crops such as almonds, grapes, apples, and blueberries.
[Intelligent sprayer robot Verdant] raised $46 million in Series A financing to expand precision spraying tools.
