Degas

Name

Degas

Legal name

Degas Ltd.

Website

https://degasafrica.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Agricultural Technology

SIC

Agricultural Services (700)

akta.pro primary industry

Farm Finance, Input Procurement & Risk Tools (Budgeting, Inventory, Insurance Links) (AFAAAFAO)

akta.pro secondary industries

Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) & Farm ERPs (AFAAAFAA), Decision Support & Prescriptive Analytics (Variable-Rate Rx, Crop Modeling) (AFABAMAE), Farm Data Management & Decision Support Services (FMIS Setup, Data Integration, Analytics) (AFACACAC), Carbon, Sustainability & MRV Services for Farms (Baseline, Monitoring, Reporting, Verification) (AFACACAK), Interoperability & Data Connectivity Services (API/ETL, ISOXML/AgGateway, Equipment Data Sync) (AFACACAL), Agriculture Inputs & Farm Supply Marketplaces (CRAFAHAL), Farm Technology Enablement & Data Integration Advisory (FMIS/ERP, IoT, Decision Support) (AFACAJAG)

Keywords

• Agricultural financing
• Geospatial AI
• Smallholder lending
• Satellite analytics
• Carbon credits

Headquarters

HQ city

Tokyo

HQ country

Japan

HQ region

Asia

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Farmer Financing: Degas provides smallholder farmers with high-quality agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizer) and specialized training. Farmers repay by delivering a portion of their agricultural outputs. The model is vertically integrated: inputs → agronomic support → harvest → offtake → repayment. Additional income comes from selling remaining crops. This creates a recurring, cycle-based revenue stream with high repayment rates (95%). The company also attracts third-party financing (e.g., European microfinance institutions) to its farmer network.
2. AI-Powered Agricultural Services and Platform Licensing: Degas offers AI-driven satellite monitoring, precision agriculture, and yield prediction as paid services to governments, agribusinesses, insurers, and financial institutions. The GeoVLM vision-language model is being commercialized for disaster response, environmental monitoring, and agricultural decision support. Services are expanded through the $100M Ghana AI hub investment.
3. Carbon Credit Generation and Sales: Degas generates high-integrity carbon credits through regenerative agriculture practices (soil carbon sequestration) and biochar production across its 400-hectare RA farm in Northern Ghana. Credits are sold to corporations seeking to offset emissions, with the voluntary carbon market as the primary buyer channel. Revenue is shared with participating smallholder farmers as an additional income stream.
4. Marketplace Products and Services: Degas is building a marketplace connecting its farmer network to third-party financial products (school loans, agricultural machinery leasing, smartphone contracts) and agricultural commodities buyers (e.g., Fuji Oil Ghana for shea nuts). The marketplace creates commission or facilitation revenue from financial product referrals and commodity aggregation.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion4 records

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

Degas is a technology company that combines two engines: a farmer financing platform connecting smallholders to credit, agricultural inputs, training, and markets, and a geospatial AI business developing foundation models trained on millions of satellite images for applications in agriculture, infrastructure, and insurance. Its vertically integrated financing model delivers inputs to over 85,000 farmers in Ghana who repay via agricultural outputs, while proprietary AI/ML credit scoring, crop monitoring, and the GeoVLM vision-language model enable real-time agricultural intelligence.

Product overview

Degas operates a dual-engine technology platform combining farmer financing and geospatial AI. The core Farmer Financing Platform connects smallholders to credit, inputs, training, and markets through a proprietary mobile app with end-to-end traceability, while the Geospatial AI / Large Geospatial Model (LGM) powers satellite-based analysis for agriculture, infrastructure, and insurance applications. The portfolio includes Degas RA regenerative agriculture practices for carbon sequestration, a Carbon Markets / D-MRV platform for carbon credit generation, and the GeoVLM vision-language model for natural language satellite analysis. Recent expansion includes a $100M AI-Powered Agricultural Hub initiative in Ghana, with 85,000+ farmers financed and foundation models trained on millions of satellite images.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Farmer Financing Platform End-to-end platform that connects smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to credit, quality agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizer), agronomic training, harvest management, and markets. Uses a proprietary mobile app for farmer enrollment, data collection, AI/ML credit scoring, input distribution, harvest tracking, and repayment management, with QR-coded bag tagging for traceability. Farmers repay by delivering a portion of agricultural outputs.
• Geospatial AI / Large Geospatial Model (LGM) Foundation AI model trained on millions of Sentinel-2 satellite images for applications in agriculture, infrastructure, insurance, and beyond. Includes land cover classification, crop segmentation, disease detection, flood/wildfire monitoring, yield prediction, and soil composition measurement. Sold to governments, agribusinesses, insurers, and financial institutions.
• GeoVLM Vision-Language Model

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 85,000 farmers financed; 86,000+ farmers supported across 122,000 acres
• +7 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration7 records

AI capability10 records

Feature7 records

Partnerships

14 partnerships are on record, tiered core, flagship and minor.

• KivacoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 8 October 2025Degas partnered with Kiva, a global nonprofit focused on financial access, to expand financing for smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana. Kiva's crowdfunding platform raises up to $600,000 in zero-interest loans distributed through Degas for farmer inputs. Degas posts individual farmer profiles on Kiva's platform starting from $25 micro-loans. This is Degas's first campaign on Kiva.
• Government of Ghana (Presidential Administration)flagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 20 August 2025At TICAD-9 in Yokohama, Degas announced a $100 million, four-year investment commitment to transform Ghana into Africa's first AI-powered agricultural hub. The initiative leverages AI-driven satellite monitoring and precision agriculture to support smallholder farmers, with the Ghanaian government providing strategic alignment with national agricultural modernization goals. President John Dramani Mahama welcomed the investment as a milestone.
• Matsuo Laboratory (The University of Tokyo)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 April 2025Degas and Matsuo Laboratory are jointly implementing the METI 'Global South Co-creation Large Demonstration Project (Non-ASEAN Countries)' for agricultural data infrastructure and AI yield prediction in Ghana and Kenya. This approximately ¥8.2 billion project runs from April 2026 to February 2029.
• Sojitz CorporationcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 29 August 2024Degas entered into a capital and business partnership with Sojitz Corporation to accelerate AI development focusing on satellite imagery analysis (geospatial foundation model) and drive digital transformation of agriculture in developing countries. Sojitz provides GPU infrastructure (H100) based on its agreement with Sakura Internet. Degas aims to expand its foundation model into Sojitz's extensive business domains beyond agriculture.
• NVIDIA Inception ProgramcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 March 2024Degas joined NVIDIA Inception, a program that nurtures startups revolutionizing industries with technological innovation. The program provides NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute credits, preferred pricing on hardware and software, and technological assistance. Degas plans to leverage these resources to enhance its in-house deep learning solutions and optimize model inference performance.
• Planet Labs PBCcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 November 2023Degas was selected for Planet's Ecosystem to leverage Planet's daily satellite imagery data. Planet provides high-frequency, high-resolution satellite images that Degas uses to develop novel agricultural monitoring applications, including machine learning algorithms to detect plant disease, regenerative agriculture verification, and carbon impact measurement.
• Pond FoundationminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 October 2023Degas collaborates with the Pond Foundation for decentralized biochar production and application as part of its regenerative agriculture (Degas RA) program. Biochar serves as both a carbon sequestration method and a soil amendment.
• Japan Alliance for High Quality Carbon Credit (JAHQCC)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 30 June 2023Degas founded and serves as secretariat for JAHQCC, a private sector alliance to promote, create, and distribute high-integrity carbon credits. Founding members include Ajinomoto, Japan Tobacco (JT), and MUFG Bank. JAHQCC aims to raise awareness about high-integrity carbon credits among Japanese companies and catalyze innovative finance mechanisms for decarbonization in developing nations, particularly Africa.
• Fuji Oil Ghana (Fuji Oil Group)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 26 June 2023Degas partnered with Fuji Oil Ghana (a subsidiary of Fuji Oil Holdings) to source sustainable shea nuts from Northern Ghana. Degas's field agents and farmer network aggregate shea nuts from women-led cooperatives, while Degas's traceability app and QR-tagging system provides full supply chain visibility. The 2023 target was 1,400 tonnes (16,000 bags) of shea nuts.
• JICA DXLab (Digital Partner)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 13 January 2023Degas participates as a JICA DXLab digital partner in an AI-driven geospatial analytics project for cost-effective crop cutting experiments in Ethiopian crop insurance.
• NestlécoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Degas partnered with Nestlé to conduct a multi-phased regenerative agriculture pilot program in Northern Ghana. The 2022 pilot covered six acres implementing minimum tillage techniques for maize cultivation, achieving healthier soil and reduced erosion. The partnership expanded to 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of regenerative agriculture — the largest RA project in Africa and developing countries to date.
• Center for No Till Agriculture (CNTA)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDegas collaborated with the Center for No Till Agriculture (CNTA) for its 2022 regenerative agriculture pilot in Northwestern Ghana. CNTA provided technical expertise for minimum tillage farming methods.
• JIRCAS (Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerJIRCAS collaborates with Degas to scale regenerative agriculture operations in Africa, providing agricultural research expertise.
• Remote Sensing Technology Center of Japan (RESTEC)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDegas partnered with RESTEC of Japan to develop a flood detection model using ALOS-2 satellite data. Tested during heavy rains in Aichi Prefecture in June 2023, the system achieved over 80% accuracy using Japan's emergency observation mode.

Scale indicators9 records

Recent moves9 records

Direct peers

• Indigo Agriculture: Indigo Agriculture combines digital agronomy, microbial products, and a large carbon credit program generated from regenerative farming practices. It is comparable to Degas as a regenerative-agriculture-plus-carbon-credit business targeting both farmers and corporate credit buyers.
• aWhere: aWhere provides satellite-based agricultural intelligence, weather data, and crop monitoring APIs to agribusinesses, governments, and NGOs globally. It competes with Degas's geospatial AI platform for enterprise and government agronomic intelligence customers.
• Apollo Agriculture: Apollo Agriculture is a Kenya-based agritech that provides smallholder farmers with financing for inputs, agronomic advice, and market access using a mobile-based credit-scoring model. It is the most direct smallholder-finance-and-data peer to Degas's Ghana farmer financing business, operating the same vertically integrated input-credit-repayment model across East Africa.
• Gro Intelligence: Gro Intelligence is an AI-driven agricultural data and analytics platform serving enterprises, governments, and financial institutions with satellite, weather, and crop data. It is a direct competitor to Degas's geospatial AI/LGM business for the enterprise agricultural intelligence customer segment.
• SunCulture: SunCulture sells solar-powered irrigation and farm equipment to smallholder farmers in East Africa on pay-as-you-go financing terms. It is a comparable smallholder-finance-plus-agtech distribution model, though focused on irrigation hardware rather than crop inputs.
• ClimateAI: ClimateAI builds AI-powered climate and yield forecasting tools for agriculture and food companies. It overlaps with Degas's yield prediction, crop monitoring, and climate-risk analytics products sold to enterprise customers.

Emerging players

• Hello Tractor: Hello Tractor operates an Uber-like platform connecting smallholder farmers to tractor owners across Africa, with embedded financing and data collection. It is an emerging agtech peer addressing mechanization and farmer data in the same Sub-Saharan smallholder market Degas serves.

Others

• Planet Labs: Planet Labs is a partner of Degas for high-frequency satellite imagery feeding its AI models. It is also a potential competitor as Planet expands into value-added analytics on top of its imagery, blurring the line between data provider and AI application layer.

Broad incumbents

• Farmers Edge: Farmers Edge is a precision agriculture and farm data analytics company serving large commercial growers globally. It is a broader-incumbent peer in the farm data/decision-support category, though it targets industrial farms rather than smallholders.
• IBM (Prithvi / NASA-IBM Geospatial Model): IBM co-developed the Prithvi geospatial foundation model with NASA, which Degas explicitly benchmarks against and outperforms. IBM is a broad incumbent in foundation models and geospatial AI, representing the large-tech competitive frontier for Degas's LGM and GeoVLM products.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Subsidiaries1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds4 records

Investors10 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Degas