Soil Action: Ending the Guesswork Beneath the Surface

Company & Team Introduction

Soil Action, a Wyoming-based agricultural intelligence company founded in 2025, is poised to solve one of the most persistent and costly inefficiencies in modern agriculture: soil fertility management. The company's mission is to eliminate the critical time lag and data imprecision of traditional soil testing, which forces farmers to make high-stakes decisions with outdated information. The leadership team's deep experience in scaling capital-intensive AgTech provides a unique strategic advantage, positioning Soil Action as a potentially disruptive force in the sector.

• Jack Oslan: Co-founder, brings hard-won experience from his previous role as a co-founder at the high-profile AgTech venture Plenty, informing Soil Action’s capital-efficient approach.

• Dr. Nate Storey: Co-founder and CEO, provides the scientific and agricultural vision for the company, drawing on invaluable lessons learned from co-founding Plenty.
  
  Currently operating with a team of size of under 10.

Product Overview

Soil Action’s core innovation is a tractor-mounted platform that provides a real-time, dynamic map of soil chemistry. The system integrates affordable, off-the-shelf near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) sensors with a proprietary AI engine, the "Foundational Model for Soil". This model interprets the sensor data on the fly, going beyond simply measuring nutrient concentrations to analyze their chemical form and bioavailability—the critical factors that determine if a plant can actually absorb them. The result is a continuous stream of actionable intelligence delivered directly to the tractor cab, eliminating the need for slow and expensive lab-based analysis.

• From Lab to Tractor: The platform turns tractors into mobile soil labs by using affordable, off-the-shelf NIRS sensors to continuously scan the soil during normal field operations.

• The AI-Powered Brain: Soil Action’s true differentiator is its proprietary "Foundational Model for Soil," an AI system that processes raw sensor data in real-time.

• Beyond Concentration to Bioavailability: The platform provides an unprecedented level of insight by analyzing not just if a nutrient is present, but whether it is in a bioavailable form that the crop can actually use.

• Dynamic Field Mapping: As a tractor moves, the system generates a layered, high-resolution map of nutrient dynamics, offering a complete picture of the field's chemistry without sending a single sample to a lab.

Market Opportunity

Soil Action is addressing a critical economic and environmental challenge that represents a "trillion-dollar blind spot" in the global food system. Current soil management practices are defined by guesswork, leading to massive financial waste—as much as 80% of applied nitrogen fertilizer is lost to the environment—and severe ecological damage, including the creation of aquatic "dead zones" and the emission of potent greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide (N2​O). The company enters a booming AI in Agriculture market, valued at over $2.1 billion in 2024 and projected to exceed $12.9 billion by 2033. Soil Action's initial focus on the U.S. strategically targets the dominant North American market, which accounts for over 35% of global sector revenue.

• Solving a Global Crisis: Addresses the massive economic waste and environmental damage caused by imprecise fertilizer application, a primary driver of nutrient pollution.

• Massive, Growing Market: The AI in Agriculture sector is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of approximately 20% through 2033.

• Strategic North American Focus: The company’s initial go-to-market strategy targets key U.S. row crop regions, the most mature market for agricultural intelligence.

• Driven by ESG and Sustainability: Responds to increasing pressure on large food corporations to mitigate the environmental impact of their supply chains, particularly Scope 3 emissions from fertilizer use.

Business Model & Traction

Soil Action’s business model is built on delivering a clear return on investment to farmers by reducing their single largest input cost—fertilizer—and enhancing crop yields. The company is currently in a critical validation phase, running pilot programs with experienced farmers in Northern Iowa to test and refine the system across diverse, real-world conditions. Early results from these trials are highly encouraging, with the company reporting that its nutrient predictions outperform legacy benchmarks, especially in fields with variable soils where traditional methods are least effective.

• Clear Farmer ROI: The platform enables precision fertilizer application, which significantly reduces waste and input costs while unlocking potential yield improvements.

• Pilot Programs Underway: Actively conducting field trials in key U.S. row crop regions to validate the technology and business model.

• Promising Early Results: Initial data shows "strong model generalization and nutrient predictions that outperform legacy benchmarks".

• Path to Commercialization: The immediate focus is on translating successful pilot programs into the first cohort of paying commercial customers, the ultimate validation of product-market fit.

Competitors

While the AgTech landscape includes players in soil analytics, Soil Action’s approach is fundamentally different. Competitors like CropX and Teralytic rely on static, in-field sensor probes that provide data from fixed points, requiring extrapolation across the rest of the field. Others, like Trace Genomics, offer deep lab-based analysis that is powerful but not real-time. Soil Action’s unique moat is its combination of mobility and real-time chemical analysis. This allows its platform to serve as a foundational data layer for the entire AgTech ecosystem, including the burgeoning carbon market where players like Indigo Ag depend on accurate soil monitoring.

• Paradigm Shift from Static Sensing: Unlike competitors using fixed sensors, Soil Action’s mobile platform creates a continuous, high-resolution data map covering 100% of a field.

• Real-Time Actionable Intelligence: While lab-based services are slow, Soil Action provides on-the-fly insights into nutrient availability, enabling immediate decision-making.

• An Enabling Technology for Carbon Markets: The platform's ability to accurately map soil organic carbon in real-time could make it an essential tool for Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) in the agricultural carbon credit industry.

• Mobility + Bioavailability: The core differentiation is the dynamic, in-motion analysis of the entire field combined with a focus on nutrient bioavailability—a level of insight competitors do not offer.

Funding

Soil Action's potential was validated by a successful $5.3 million seed funding round announced in August 2025. The round was led by R7 Partners and included a syndicate of investors with deep expertise in agriculture and climate technology. The capital is being deployed to accelerate growth and achieve key milestones on the path to commercialization.