AMES, Iowa, Aug. 26, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Sabanto, the market leader in autonomous tractor retrofit technology, today announced the appointment of John M. Raines to its Board of Directors. The appointment follows the company’s recent close of an oversubscribed Series B funding round, led by Leaps by Bayer with participation from Sustainable Forward Capital, InnoVenture Iowa, Fulcrum Global Capital, DCVC Bio, and Yara.

The new capital will accelerate Sabanto’s mission to make agricultural autonomy more accessible by offering affordable and versatile, brand-agnostic retrofit technology that enables producers to bring autonomy to the equipment they already own. By lowering the CAPEX barrier to adopting autonomous technology, Sabanto is giving farmers a practical, cost-effective way to reduce labor demands, maximize equipment efficiency and move toward the future of farming. The funding will support the expansion of Sabanto’s manufacturing and deployment capabilities, growth of its engineering and commercial teams, and continued investment in its proprietary Vehicle Operating System (vOS) and Vehicle Mission Control (vMC) software.

“Agtech is littered with innovative technology that never became a great business. Building the technology is only half the battle. The hard part is getting it into farmers’ hands and scaling it. John has actually done that at a level very few people in this industry have. That’s why I’m excited to welcome him to our Board,” said Craig Rupp, Founder and CEO of Sabanto.

Raines brings more than three decades of executive leadership in agriculture, technology commercialization, and data-driven business transformation to Sabanto’s board. He most recently served as President of TELUS Digital Agriculture & Consumer Goods, where he led a global division applying cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to agriculture and consumer goods, growing revenue by double digits and expanding the business into 50 countries. Earlier in his career, Raines served as Chief Commercial Officer of The Climate Corporation, where he helped build and commercialize Climate FieldView, one of the industry’s leading digital farming platforms, and spent more than a decade in senior leadership roles at Monsanto.

Raines currently serves on the Board of Directors of FMC Corporation (NYSE: FMC), where he sits on the Audit and Nominating & Corporate Governance committees, and on the board of Sydenstricker Nobbe Partners, a 42-location John Deere dealership group, where he chairs the Audit Committee. He also serves as a director of TPNB Bank and Chairman of its holding company, Paris Bancshares, and maintains a gubernatorial appointment on the University of Missouri Board of Curators. He holds a B.S. in Agriculture Systems Management from the University of Missouri.

“I’m excited about the benefits autonomous technology can deliver to farmers. Between the shortage in labor and the cost of production on farms today, autonomy provides a whole new avenue to drive productivity and return on invested capital,” said Raines.

About Sabanto:
Sabanto is a leading provider of retrofit autonomous tractor technology, transforming existing farm equipment into autonomous machines that help farmers increase productivity, reduce labor demands and maximize their equipment investment. Powered by Sabanto’s Vehicle Mission Control platform, its technology enables autonomous operation across a range of agricultural applications while advancing its mission to make autonomy accessible, practical and productive for farmers.

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SOURCE Sabanto, Inc.