Dive Brief:
- Agribusiness powerhouse Monsanto will pay roughly $1 billion in cash for The Climate Corporation.
- The Climate Corporation has its roots in Google. The CEO is an ex-Google employee; Google Ventures is one of the company's financial backers.
- The Climate Corporation uses machine-learning technology to collect and analyze weather data. The idea is to predict future weather patterns more accurately, thus mitigating risk for large-scale agricultural producers.
Dive Insight:
Big data. Big Ag. Big Food. It all makes sense in a big way, we suppose. And spending a billion bucks on weather technology (on the same day you report a quarter-billion-dollar loss) takes some big—well, you get the idea.
Still, we expect that somewhere out in the Midwest there's an old man with his finger to the wind and a feeling in his bones, thinking that it's going to rain soon. We love that guy. And we shall miss him when he's gone.