Aquabyte celebrates $3.5m catch

Aquabyte, a US-based fish farming optimisation technology startup founded by an alumnus of Princeton University, has secured $3.5m in a seed round featuring the university.

The round was co-led by VC firms Costanoa Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, and also included unspecified strategic investors from the US and Norway.  Norway-based startup news site Shifter named local VC firm Alliance Venture as an additional participant.

Aquabyte is creating aquaculture analytics technology that applies computer vision and machine learning to pictures from underwater 3D cameras. The platform could help fish farmers predict how much feed is needed to support their livestock, adding clarity to a major cost outlay for the industry.

Aquabyte operates from offices in San Francisco, US and in Bergen, Norway – the latter country is home to the world’s largest population of wild salmon.

The company is currently piloting its technology at several Norway-based research institutions and fishing farms. It also plans to add the ability to detect sea lice, a parasite that can make infected fish vulnerable to diseases.

Aquabyte was founded by Bryton Shang, who now acts as chief executive and who completed a data science degree at Princeton in operations research and financial engineering. 

Princeton’s Alumni Entrepreneurs Fund, which supports new alumni-founded businesses, invested $50,000 in Aquabyte in May 2017. Aquabyte also received early assistance from NCE Seafood Innovation, a Norwegian state-backed research centre.

Shang said: “The development of computer vision over the past couple years along with the advent of deep learning has opened up dramatic opportunities to build new vision-related products that can solve very practical, real-world problems.

“The same computer-vision models I worked on for tissue cancer diagnosis are applicable in a way that can transform the fish farming industry and the future of protein consumption around the world.”