This is very cool. Just the start of amazing new use cases of AI to change the way we fundamentally do things
this is just the most ridiculous AI application i've ever seen lol
a Peter Thiel-backed startup that makes AI collars for cows is now worth $2 billion
and the more I read about it the cooler it gets. here's how it works:
every cow wears a solar-powered collar that talks to a network of radio towers and an app on the farmer's phone
instead of building physical fences, the farmer draws the fence on a map in the app, and the collar keeps each cow inside that invisible line using GPS
when a cow drifts toward the edge, the collar plays a sound to steer her, and a gentle vibration tells her which way to go.
it's like how a car beeps as you back up toward a wall
the cows learn the cues in a few days
so now a rancher can move an entire herd to fresh grass by sliding the fence on a map, without driving out to open a single gate
and that same collar is reading each cow's body the whole time.
it takes five readings per second on every animal, so the AI can catch a cow that's sick, injured, ready to breed, or about to give birth before a person would ever notice walking the field
so it's basically like WHOOP for cows too lol
and they gave the AI behind it the perfect name: the Cowgorithm
it's been trained on more than 7 billion hours of real cow behavior, which is why Halter calls the data its real asset and moat.
they know what a normal cow looks like better than anyone, so they can flag the odd one out instantly
it's already on more than 1M cattle across New Zealand, Australia, and a bunch of US states.
California even used it on public land to graze cattle in patterns that clear dry brush and slow down wildfires
costs about $5 to $8 per cow per month
a job that used to mean barbed wire, gates, and driving the fields all day is now mostly 1 person on their phone