Sara Menker

Sara Menker was born and raised in Ethiopia. While working as a commodities trader at Morgan Stanley, she saw firsthand how new methods of using data completely transformed the way energy markets function, allowing longer-term thinking, innovative approaches to managing risk, and new investments. She saw that the lesson of how data could transform an entire industry could be applied to a problem of existential importance – how to ensure global food security in an unstable world that is dealing with the twin challenges of population growth and climate change.

The global agricultural supply chain is deeply interconnected, but at the same time is incredibly fragmented from a data perspective. This lack of information has resulted in market failures that allow large caloric surpluses to exist in some places, while other regions, and humanity as a whole, face the potential of massive deficits and commensurate human suffering.

To solve this problem, Sara founded Gro Intelligence, an AI-powered analytics company that illuminates the interrelationships between the Earth’s ecology and our human economy. By organizing the world’s vast amounts of agricultural and climate data and building innovative predictive analytics, Gro allows corporations, financial institutions, and governments to ‘see around the corner’ and make better decisions on how to feed the world.

Gro Intelligence has offices in Nairobi, New York, and Singapore and has raised over $125 million in funding from a combination of institutional investors (such as TPG Growth and Intel Capital) and large family offices.