The following is a guest post authored by David Pitman (@edavepitman), co-founder of Converge (@converge_co). I was told Fred was the man to talk to about inspecting buildings. But I don't know that he's ever used email," my reference said, advising that I call his phone. Surprisingly though, Fred has a website. The sole image on the site shows him standing on a roof in a ten-gallon hat staring jauntily down at the steep angle.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence IoT Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. Switzerland-based agricultural tech Gamaya announced yesterday that it had raised 3.2 million in funding to combine drones and artificial intelligence to improve farmers' yields, according to Fortune. Gamaya was spun out of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a research university in Switzerland, and received funding from Nestle's Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Swiss venture capital firm VI Partners, and others. The startup uses drones equipped with hyperspectral cameras that can capture changes in water and fertilizer use, crop yields, and pests.