Nexa Labs: Implantable Microchips for Cattle Monitoring

TLDR: Nexa builds implantable “FitBits” + AI for cattle monitoring. We empower farmers with early disease detection and reproductive insights that save them time and money.

https://youtu.be/goioQTngpSU

Problem

Efficiently monitoring cattle health and reproduction is critical to maintain farm profitability. But the traditional practice of manually inspecting animals doesn’t scale - labor costs add up, while farms miss disease outbreaks and breeding cycles. Disease alone causes ~$100 billion in losses yearly for cattle farms globally.

Existing tech for monitoring cattle includes external wearables like collars and ear-tags. Being outside thick cattle skin, these can’t accurately track useful biometrics beyond “activity” (a glorified step-count). There’s also boluses, pill-shaped devices that sit in the cow stomach. But these are super expensive, have short battery life, and can’t be used for beef cattle.

Solution

Nexa is building implantable microchips that go underneath the skin in the ear of cattle. We analyze vital biometrics - like temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen, activity, GPS location, and more - that other systems miss, to empower farmers with early disease detection and reproductive insights. And because our electronics operate at millimeter scale, we benefit from low production costs and pricing up to 70% cheaper than current solutions.

Our hardware also enables collection of the world’s largest cattle health dataset - so, we can develop foundation models that can unlock new possibilities in farm management and livestock pharma.

We’re currently launching our dairy pilot program - if you know any dairy farmers based in the USA, please send them our way at admin@nexa.farm :)

About Us

We’re a team of Caltech dropouts with backgrounds in bioengineering, electrical engineering, CS, math, and physics. We want to build technology that makes a tangible impact on the lives of real people in America and beyond.