Blue River Technology builds the computer vision behind John Deere's See and Spray precision agriculture system, acquired for 305 million dollars in 2017.
Blue River Technology is an agricultural technology company founded in 2011 by Stanford graduate students Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden, built around applying computer vision and machine learning to make farming more precise and sustainable. Its best-known product, See and Spray, uses onboard cameras and machine learning models to tell crops apart from weeds in real time and spray herbicide only where it is needed.
In September 2017, John Deere acquired Blue River Technology for approximately 305 million dollars. The company has operated as a John Deere subsidiary since the acquisition, continuing its agricultural computer vision and robotics work while retaining a startup-style engineering culture within the larger Deere organization.
Blue River remains headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and continues to hire for machine learning, computer vision, and field application roles, indicating it remains an active part of John Deere's technology operations rather than a fully absorbed or discontinued division.
See and Spray combines onboard cameras, edge computing, and machine learning models trained on agricultural imagery to differentiate individual crop plants from weeds while a sprayer moves through a field, triggering targeted herbicide application only where weeds are detected.
Since the John Deere acquisition, the technology has been packaged into multiple product tiers: See and Spray Premium, which debuted for cotton in 2020 and expanded to corn and soybeans by 2022, and See and Spray Select, launched in 2024 as a more affordable retrofit kit for existing sprayers.
The system integrates directly with John Deere sprayers and tractors, giving farmers real-time, in-field processing rather than requiring data to be sent off-site for analysis before spraying decisions are made.
Blue River Technology does not sell standalone software with public, self-serve pricing. Its See and Spray technology is delivered as a feature of John Deere agricultural equipment, either factory-installed on new sprayers or added as a retrofit kit through See and Spray Select.
Pricing and configuration are handled through John Deere's dealer network and vary based on the specific sprayer model, acreage, and configuration a farm operation needs, so there is no published flat rate for the technology itself.
Farmers interested in See and Spray typically work with a local John Deere dealer to determine equipment compatibility, retrofit options, and financing rather than purchasing access directly from Blue River Technology.
No, Blue River Technology has operated as a subsidiary of John Deere since Deere acquired it in September 2017 for approximately 305 million dollars, though it continues to operate with a degree of startup-style autonomy.
Blue River Technology develops computer vision, robotics, and machine learning systems for agriculture, most notably the See and Spray precision spraying technology used on John Deere equipment.
See and Spray is a system that uses onboard cameras and machine learning to distinguish crops from weeds in real time so herbicide is applied only where needed rather than across an entire field.
John Deere has reported that See and Spray reduced herbicide use by nearly 50 percent and saved an estimated 31 million gallons of herbicide across about 5 million acres in 2025.
No, See and Spray is delivered as an integrated feature of John Deere sprayers or as a retrofit kit (See and Spray Select) for compatible existing sprayers, rather than as standalone software.
Blue River Technology was founded in 2011 by Stanford graduate students Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden.
John Deere acquired Blue River Technology in September 2017 for approximately 305 million dollars.
Blue River Technology is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, United States, after originally being founded in nearby Sunnyvale, California.