Y Combinator is spearheading a $1.2 million pre-seed funding round for GrazeMate, a pioneering startup founded by 19-year-old Sam Rogers, aimed at revolutionizing cattle mustering through drone technology. Backed by Australia’s NextGen Ventures, Antler, and Meat & Livestock Australia, GrazeMate is expanding its operations from Queensland and New South Wales into California.
Growing up on a farm in Bowen, Northern Queensland, Rogers witnessed firsthand the labor-intensive process of mustering cattle using horseback and motorbikes. His passion for robotics and technology inspired him to create a more efficient solution to bring his father home before sunset.
From Farm to Tech Startup
In 2025, Rogers formally established GrazeMate, transitioning from a farmer to a CEO. Within a year, the company secured commitments to manage 1.7 million acres across Queensland and New South Wales and is now setting its sights on California. The GrazeMate app allows farmers to select a paddock and deploy a drone to move the herd, eliminating the need for organizing manpower or machinery.
“GrazeMate lets a farmer open an app, select a paddock, and send a drone out to move the herd. Instead of organizing people, bikes, or a helicopter, the job just happens, and you get a message when the cattle are through the gate,” Rogers tells Forbes Australia.
Innovative Technology and Data-Driven Decisions
Beyond moving livestock, GrazeMate’s technology offers valuable data to assist farmers in making informed decisions. The drones report on pasture availability, provide weight estimates of the herd, and monitor critical infrastructure like water troughs.
“As a drone musters, it’s able to report back how much pasture is available, a weight estimate of the herd, and a report on critical infrastructure like water troughs. We’re helping farmers see and do more than they could otherwise,” Rogers explains.
A significant selling point of GrazeMate is its autonomy. Farmers can run musters from an app on their phone without having to manually control the drone. The system executes tasks and makes real-time decisions based on herd movement, reporting back all observations.
“A farmer’s time is their most limited resource; most operations are family-run, and labor’s a fixed commodity,” says Rogers. “What’s different about GrazeMate is that it runs itself. Instead of piloting, the farmer simply sets the task and the system executes it.”
Backing from Investors and a Remarkable Journey
NextGen Ventures, impressed by the innovation and Rogers’ entrepreneurial spirit, joined the Y Combinator-led funding round. They discovered Rogers, a Mechatronics Engineering student at the University of Sydney, through their network of on-campus investors.
“Sam had taught himself how to code in Chinese with alternative drones as he wasn’t yet able to afford the max-spec drones he would eventually go on to build with,” says NextGen partner Jerry X’Lingson.
Rogers’ journey is nothing short of extraordinary. At 14, he built a robotic arm and trained an AI model to detect electronic waste, eventually placing second in an international AI competition. At 16, he overcame a life-threatening spinal injury and went on to climb Everest.
“The final driver actually came in the Himalayas. I’d gone to climb the Everest ridgeline after recovering from a spinal tumor and a broken back, looking for some bigger sense of purpose,” Rogers recalls. “What I found instead was the way Sherpas herd yaks… We’ve been working on how to replicate that kind of natural signaling on a much larger scale ever since.”
Technological Advancements and Industry Impact
GrazeMate’s innovation is enabled by recent technological advancements. Improvements in drone battery life, the rise of affordable edge computing, and regulatory changes have opened the door to real autonomy.
“Over the last decade, defense investment has driven huge improvements in drone battery life. At the same time, the AI boom has made edge computing incredibly powerful and affordable,” says Rogers. “All of that is happening just as ranchers are under more pressure than ever from labor shortages, rising costs, and increasing demand.”
GrazeMate aims to provide farmers with the leverage to meet these challenges, drawing parallels to the impact of tools like ChatGPT in the knowledge sector. As the company expands into new territories, it seeks to transform the agricultural landscape by integrating cutting-edge technology with traditional farming practices.
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