Spensa Technologies was a

private company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...

based in the

Purdue Research Park The Purdue Research Parks are a network of four research parks located in Indiana, United States. The flagship West Lafayette park is located less than north of Purdue University's West Lafayette campus, and is the largest university-affilia ...

West Lafayette West Lafayette () is a city in Wabash Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, about northwest of the state capital of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette is directly across the Wabash River from its sister city ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...

that specialized in

precision agriculture Precision agriculture (PA) is a farming management strategy based on observing, measuring and responding to temporal and spatial variability to improve agricultural production sustainability. It is used in both crop and livestock production. ...

. The company, founded in 2009, was known for its ag-related technology, including automated

pest Pest or The Pest may refer to: Science and medicine * Pest (organism), an animal or plant deemed to be detrimental to humans or human concerns ** Weed, a plant considered undesirable * Infectious disease, an illness resulting from an infection ** ...

sensors and software. It was acquired in April 2018 by DTN.

History

Spensa was founded on 16 January 2009 by Johnny Park, a computer engineering professor at Purdue University, whose research into robotics and

computer vision Computer vision is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate t ...

in farming (supported by a $6.4M

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...

grant) led to the creation of the company. With support from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

and private investment, Spensa expanded its operations and developed agriculture-related hardware and software products. Spensa's principal hardware product was the Z-Trap, an automated electronic device that detects insects in a field and wirelessly reports its data. Its software consisted of both web-based and mobile applications, centered on the Spensa Agronomic Platform (AP), a subscription-based software. Spensa was acquired in April 2018 by Minneapolis-based DTN,{{cite web , url=https://www.xconomy.com/indiana/2018/03/13/dtn-set-to-acquire-spensa-continuing-trend-of-farm-software-deals/ , title=DTN Set to Acquire Spensa, Continuing Trend of Farm Software Deals , last=Vinluan , first=Frank , date=13 March 2018 , website=Xconomy , access-date=2018-05-02 , quote=Spensa Technologies, a startup that has developed sensors, software, and other products that give farmers insights about their operations, is now set to become part of global digital services company DTN. a company owned by TBG AG.

References

Agriculture companies of the United States Privately held companies based in Indiana Technology companies established in 2009 West Lafayette, Indiana