2025 Year in Review: Turning Confidence Into Capability
At the start of 2025, we were not asking whether automatic grain grading would work. We knew it would. The focus for us at Ground Truth Ag was making sure the product worked to our level of precision, reliability, and performance, and that it met and exceeded the high standards we hold ourselves to.
For our Chief Executive Officer, Kyle Folk, one of the most meaningful achievements of the year was seeing the benchtop system move from development into everyday industry use.
“Getting the benchtop into the market and seeing it used in the industry was a major milestone,” Kyle said. “Grain grading has been done the same way for 115 years. Being part of that change is something we are really proud of.”
From Early Builds to Industry Use
Early in 2025, we delivered our first benchtop units. They worked and they were in customers’ hands. As we like to joke internally, that first version did not even have a cover yet, but it did what it was designed to do.
From there, refinement happened quickly as we introduced improvements that increased efficiency and precision, including a dual camera system, while continuing to strengthen both the hardware and software behind it.
As adoption increased, the amount of data flowing through the system grew just as quickly.
“The scale of data coming through automatic grading compared to manual methods was significant,” said Divyesh Patel, our Chief Operating Officer. “We had to make sure we could assess it properly and use it to keep improving the product.”
Learning Directly From Customers
Customer feedback played a central role throughout 2025, particularly from facilities using the benchtop and from on combine testing environments.
Across facilities, the benchtop proved its worth by performing to a level of matching accuracy not initially expected by customers and quickly surpassed expectations in accuracy and consistency performance. Many also started using the benchtop as a training and calibration tool, helping bring greater alignment and consistency across grading teams.
“Passing evaluation from experienced graders was an important moment for us,” Kyle said. “Seeing customers adapt the system to their workflows, including building custom names for their benchtop, showed us it was becoming part of how they operate.”
The Work Behind the Product
Some of the most important progress this year happened behind the scenes.
Our team expanded the library of grading models and grain types, improved the benchtop hardware, and strengthened the processes that support software development, model management, and manufacturing. This work positioned us for the growth ahead.
“As the team grew, our focus shifted to aligning how we work,” Kyle said. “2025 was about building strong processes so we can scale with confidence.”
For the first time, we moved through the full cycle of development, refinement, customer deployment, and support within a single year.
“We completed the full loop this year,” Divyesh said. “Developing the product, refining it, supporting customers, and learning directly from real world use.”
What 2025 Taught Us
The most valuable lessons came from putting our product into customer facilities and seeing how it performed day after day.
“Getting the product into customers’ hands taught us what stability and performance really means,” Divyesh said. “Meeting expectations at that level requires consistency.”
When asked to describe the year in one word, the answer was clear.
“Accelerate,” Divyesh said.
And from Kyle’s perspective, one theme stood out across the company.
“Collaborative.”