Key takeaway: Electric Plant is developing Bombadil to interpret plant signals across about 125 species, but claimed farm benefits remain unverified.
Electric Plant is applying artificial intelligence to plant monitoring rather than to conventional web or advertising search. TechCrunch reported on October 20, 2026, that the startup has spent the past three years collecting data for Bombadil, a large language model designed to interpret subtle electrical signals moving through plant stems and return information about plant needs to growers.
Turning electrical signals into growing guidance
Electric Plant co-founders Justin Mast and Lee von Kraus believe electrical activity inside plants may contain clues about needs such as water, nutrients and light. The company says Bombadil can interpret signals from about 125 species, including ferns, redwoods, tomatoes and dahlias. The report does not establish that Bombadil can already support two-way communication with plants. The company’s longer-term ambition is first to listen to plants and eventually explore tools that could let people communicate with them.
The sensors are approximately the size of a regular iPhone folded lengthwise. Stainless-steel screws attach them to plants, penetrating the cambium, the living tissue beneath the bark, to connect with microvolt-level changes. A low-power wireless network sends the collected data to a base station. Bombadil processes the information in the cloud, and the results are returned to customers, who could use them to adjust watering or fertilizer schedules. Electric Plant says only a few sensors per acre are needed for accurate results, but the article does not provide independent testing details for that claim.
An early commercial stage
TechCrunch reported that Electric Plant recently raised an $11.2 million seed round led by Onto Ventures and Climactic, with participation from Ponderosa, Endeavor Catalyst, Ludlow, Michigan Rise, The Fund, Schox VC and Dug Song. The startup has not disclosed its initial customers, so the available reporting does not establish which farms, forestry operators or greenhouses are using the system.
The company says its system could increase yields while reducing water use by 20% or more. That is a company claim, not an independently verified result in the source material. The report also does not provide controlled comparisons, crop-specific outcomes or a confirmed deployment scope. Electric Plant’s founders say existing tools often cost thousands of dollars, while their sensors cost tens of dollars; those figures were also provided by the company.
A separate control question in ad technology
Digiday reported the same day on a different automation issue in programmatic advertising. Prebid, a nonprofit organization that supports open-source publishing tools, is proposing a change to the sequence of the advertising auction. Under the current arrangement, Prebid sends a winning bid to Google’s ad server, GAM, where it competes with demand from Google AdX. Under the proposed model, GAM and potentially other ad servers would bid into Prebid instead.
That change could give publishers access to AdX demand without making Google’s ad server the place where the final competition occurs. The proposal has not received final approval. Prebid is targeting formalization in early 2027, not an immediate rollout, and Google has not committed to adopting the architecture. Digiday also reported that Google introduced optional channel-priority and budget-allocation controls on October 14 across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen.
These reports do not show that Bombadil and Prebid use the same technology. They describe separate developments in which the value and influence of automated systems depend on data collection, decision points and user control. Bombadil remains an early plant-monitoring effort covering the company’s stated range of about 125 species, while Prebid’s proposal remains a pending change to advertising infrastructure.
References
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/20/plants-can-speak-using-electricity-so-this-startup-built-an-ai-model-to-decipher-their-language/
- https://digiday.com/marketing/ad-tech-briefing-can-flipping-the-ad-auction-wrest-control-of-ad-tech-from-google/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss