Spensa Technologies was a

private company A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose Stock, shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the Private equi ...

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-affiliate ...

West Lafayette West Lafayette ( ) is a city in Wabash Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, Wabash and Tippecanoe Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, Tippecanoe Townships, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, approximately northwest of the state capit ...

Indiana Indiana ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north and northeast, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the s ...

that specialized in

precision agriculture Precision agriculture (PA) is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated varia ...

. The company, founded in 2009, was known for its ag-related technology, including automated pest 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 tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

in farming (supported by a $6.4M

USDA The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that aims to meet the needs of commerc ...

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

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

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 TBG AG (Thyssen-Bornemisza Group; ), is a private investment firm based in Zürich, Switzerland. The company is the investment arm of the Thyssen-Bornemisza family TBG's CEO is Jeremy Abson. Associated entities include TBG Holdings (Bermuda), ...

References

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