Halter

"This is home for us, and we don't want to lose this," Rael said. "We want to use whatever technology, whatever resources are out there to help keep us on this land." We're partnering with ranchers on the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico to trial virtual fencing on public land. The coalition includes the Bureau of Land Management Taos Field Office, Friends of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, Alianza Agri-Cultura de Taos, and Working Lands Conservation. They're starting with local producers like Ezequiel Rael, who drives 90 minutes each way just to check water and fix fences that are over a century old. The trial will use virtual fencing to enable rotational grazing for grassland restoration, protect riparian areas, and eliminate the barbed wire that elk tear through every year. The project includes multi-year monitoring to measure the impact on soil health, forage production, and wildlife movement. We're proud to be working alongside ranchers to keep multi-generational operations viable on the landscapes they've stewarded for over a century. Read the full story from The Taos News at the link in the comments! 📷: Clementine Miller, Taos News

Privileged to be on this list along with the other amazing finalists! 🎉

The historic Pitchfork Ranch near Meeteetse, Wyoming has miles of 100-year-old barbwire that costs $25K per mile to replace, plus at least a day or two per pasture every year just patching it up. Ranch manager Ben Anson was skeptical about virtual fencing. But now he's running Halter through a PERC wildlife partnership, building fence lines on his phone, protecting riparian zones, pushing cattle into underutilized rough terrain, tracking real-time location on every cow, and genuinely thinking about tearing down the old fence entirely. Open range might actually come back to Wyoming. Full story from Cowboy State Daily at the link in the comments. 📸: Lindsay Coe, PERC

We’re excited to announce our Series E - a USD$220M ($380M NZD) raise led by Founders Fund with support from our existing investors, at a USD$2B valuation. This funding allows us to accelerate global growth and pursue a far more ambitious product roadmap. We don’t see this as a big milestone, we see it as a commitment. A commitment to our customers and to the future of agriculture. There is enormous potential for technology to transform this industry. To the 2,000+ farmers and ranchers who trust us to be part of your operations: it’s a privilege to serve you. You're the real heroes in this story, changing the world one operation at a time. We now have 1 million cattle across New Zealand, Australia, and the United States signed. Looking ahead, we’re expanding into new markets and growing our team across all functions. We’re building across AI, drones, hardware, and more. We’re looking for exceptional engineers, designers, product builders, and operators to join us. If you want to work hard on meaningful problems, come join us! Why Founders Fund? They back generational companies - SpaceX, Airbnb, Spotify, OpenAI, to name a few. We deeply value their ambition and conviction, and we’re excited to help build the future of agriculture together. And finally, to the Halter team: your grit, hard work and joy are what make this company what it is. Plenty more ahead. - Craig

Five generations of women have run Ingel-Haven Ranch in Potter Valley, California. Each one inherited land already marked by the decisions made before her, and each adjusted the model to fit her moment. Grace Magruder's great-grandmother Helen arrived in 1919. Her grandmother shifted the ranch from sheep to cattle when the landscape and markets demanded it. Her aunt Helen ran summer camps for kids from the city and became the ranch's most devoted ecological observer. Grace herself left for eight years, studied American history in Boston, and came back. "This ranch really owes itself to the women who decided to come back," Grace says. "They were never obligated to return. No one assigned them the responsibility of keeping it going. They chose it." This International Women's Month, we're celebrating the women in agriculture who have shaped the land, adapted when conditions changed, and chosen to stay. Read Grace's full story, published by Drovers (thanks Angie Stump Denton!), at the link in the comments. 💚

Super special to see Craig's mum Rosalie and sister Renee accept his award for Innovator of the Year at the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year Awards last night! We are super proud of Craig 🎉 Craig and the rest of our team love bringing Kiwi-born innovation to our incredible farmers and ranchers around the world, and we're only just getting started 👩🏻🌾 A huge round of applause for the other winners leading a range of transformative initiatives - congratulations! 👏🏻

We’re stoked to share a big update for the Ranch Management Resource Initiative! We've added Noble Research Institute as another partner to bring their grazing courses to Halter ranchers. Halter ranchers can now attend Noble Grazing Essentials or Business of Grazing, with Halter covering the cost! For operations with 250+ head, we'll cover up to 4 people. For operations with 100+ head, we'll cover 1 person. Noble Grazing Essentials and Business of Grazing are both 3-day hands-on courses on adaptive grazing and forage management. Ranchers learn how to assess forage production, calculate carrying capacity, and build grazing plans that work for their operation. Noble joins our existing partners: Ranching For Profit, Holistic Management International, Impact Ag Partners, and SnapLands. You can learn more about the program at the link in the comments!

If you had the chance to completely start over, would you take it? Ron Jespersen's family has been ranching the same Nebraska ground since 1907. His great-grandfather homesteaded it. His grandfather and father kept it going through droughts and the farm crisis of the '80s. Now Ron and his sons, Lee, Aaron, and Patrick, are running 900 head together on land that's been in the family for over a century. For decades, Ron operated the only way he knew how. Then his sons came home from a grazing school with a simple message: "Dad, you're overgrazing." 'That was a punch in the gut,' Ron admits. But four months later, everything looked different. In the next four months, Ron completely changed how he manages his land and his cattle. Open rates dropped from over 10% to under 4%. The family is cutting thousands of tons of hay and silage, transitioning instead to year-round adaptive grazing on corn stalks and cover crops. And Ron, who didn't know what soil microbes even were, is now watching his soil come back to life. We spent a day with the Jespersens to see what this massive transformation actually looks like: moving cattle with virtual fencing, grazing corn stalks in winter strips, building water infrastructure, and planning a future where every acre has cattle on it. Ron shares that this isn't just about changing how they run the ranch. It's about building something the fifth and sixth generations can actually come back to. It's about keeping rural Nebraska alive. This is the second episode of A Halter Series: a year-long documentary project visiting 12 ranchers across 12 states to showcase the incredible diversity of American ranching. 💚 Link to Ron's full episode in the comments! 👇

We had an awesome day with Pāmu Landcorp Farming Limited up at the beautiful Kapiro farm in Northland recently. Kapiro’s a great example of a mixed operation with beef cattle and sheep, and because it’s the Winterless North there’s avos, blueberries and strawbs too! Kapiro’s farm manager talked through the results they’ve seen with Halter, including a 50kg increase in live weight on their calves who’ve been creep crazing ahead of the herd to get the best feed, improved pasture quality and better cow condition. Cows took 5 days to train and staff said they were “surprised how easy it was”! They’re loving the extra data they’re getting from the collars which is going into their farm management tools and helping them make better and more informed decisions. It’s also helped them drive down the amount of dry matter required per kg of milk solids which is an awesome result. Halter turned up in force with a great crew led by our President Andrew Fraser and Key Account Manager Ash-Leigh Campbell - we can’t keep Andrew away from a good farm open day, and a perfect excuse for him to wear shorts. We're so grateful to partner with Pāmu Landcorp Farming Limited and we're looking forward to seeing where the partnership goes next!