Unveiling Peter Thiel’s big bet on solar energy cow collars

Founders Fund has made its name supporting what Peter Thiel calls “zero to one” companies – businesses that don’t just change existing ideas but create something new. His portfolio includes Facebook, SpaceX, and Palantir. His latest bet is in New Zealand which is putting smart solar panels on cows.

Halterwhich closed Series E of $ 220 million at a cost of $ 2 billion last month, with Founders Fund leading the round, is not the type of company that likes to dominate the headlines of technology. There are no agent AI involved, no humanoid robots. However, there is a very big problem that has not been solved: How do you drive cattle that are spread across the most remote parts of the world, without dogs, horses, motorcycles, or helicopters?

Craig Piggott, Halter’s 30-year-old founder and CEO, has spent nine years working in accountability. “If you’re managing a dairy farm, whether it’s dairy or beef, the most important thing is how you manage the productivity of your farm,” Piggott told TechCrunch in a recent interview. “Fences are a control – they control where animals eat and how you breathe the soil. It was smart to be able to do that.”

The system Halter has developed combines a solar-powered collar, a network of low-frequency towers, and a smartphone app that allows farmers to build virtual fences, monitor each animal day and night, and move their cattle without leaving the farm. Cows are trained to respond to audio and vibrate from a collar – Piggott’s process is likened to the sound of a car screeching as it approaches a wall while stopping. It is said that many animals learn in three-seated enclosures. “Then you can control them and move them around on sound and vibration alone.”

A collar does more than just a cow. Because it is always there and collects behavioral information, it also monitors the health of the animals, monitors the cycle of fertility, and flags when any animal may be sick, a possibility that Piggott says has changed dramatically since Halter found what is probably the world’s largest group of cattle. The company is now on its fifth generation of hardware, and its product is currently in beta with US customers.

“The products that farmers use today are very different from what they bought last year,” Piggott said. “Every week, we release new products for our customers.”

Piggott grew up on a dairy farm in New Zealand before studying engineering and landing a brief stint at Rocket Lab, the rocket company that gave him his first glimpse of what technology could be. “Rocket Lab was like my introduction to technology and startups and the financial world,” he said. Realizing that you could raise money, hire a team, and pursue an ambitious project was very inspiring. I wanted to do it in agriculture. He started Halter when he was 21. “Maybe a little naive in retrospect,” he admitted, “but that was okay.”

Nine years later, the Halter stable is raising more than one million cows on more than 2,000 farms in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, where the company operates in 22 regions. The economic proposition for farmers is simple: By giving farmers control over where their cows graze, Halter can raise the yield of their land by 20% – not by saving labor costs (although this also happens), but by making sure that the cows eat well and leave the grass. less. “Sometimes, we see customers increasing the output of their properties,” Piggott said. “The high return ceiling is very strong.”

Halter is not alone in spying opportunities. The pharmaceutical giant Merck already produces its own cattle fence, called Vence, and new entrants are also around – at Y Combinator’s “demo day”, a startup called Grazemate presented a vision of autonomous cattle herding with drones (no cages required).

Piggott seems unfazed. When asked about drones, he answers: “Could I see drones playing a small role in the future? Maybe. But I don’t think drones are the right way to create barriers. And as for the big picture of competition, he argues the real obstacle is not the ability to compete at all. “The big competition isn’t just changing anything,” he said. “It’s doing what you did last year.”

What distinguishes Halter, Piggott argues, is the technical problem that he has been solving for nine years – a system for monitoring a thousand animals must be reliable for nine years, because even a 1% failure means ten animals every time. “Running a reliable nine takes time,” he said, “and this long tail is what we proved in New Zealand many years before we started spreading it around the world.”

Halter is also a key player in agricultural technology, which has declined in recent years as startups struggle to convince farmers to adopt new products while managing expensive ones. Piggott attributes Halter’s appeal to his relentless focus on the economy. “From day one, Halter was built around a very strong ROI,” he said. “If you can raise the productivity of the land by 20%, that will flow throughout the business.”

Unlike many tech companies, Halter doesn’t see the United States as the center of the universe. “The US market is important to us, but it’s not the biggest market in the world,” Piggott said. “Agriculture has spread all over the world, and we need to get there too.” The company has now raised nearly $400 million in total and is focusing on growth in the US, South America, and Europe.

But the extent of the remaining opportunities is perhaps best captured in a single number — one that no doubt resonated with Founders Fund and Halter’s supporters, too. The Halter collar is on one million cows, of which there are one billion in the world. With less than 10% penetration in its New Zealand market alone, “We have a long way to go, and a lot of things we’re making,” Piggott said.

You can listen to our interview with Piggott on the latest episode of Download StrictlyVC podcast, which drops on Tuesdays.