James Paterson

James Paterson is the co-founder and CEO of Aerobotics, a Cape Town-based precision agriculture company that turns drone and satellite imagery into AI-powered, tree-by-tree insights for fruit and nut growers. Raised on a family citrus farm and trained as a mechatronics engineer at the University of Cape Town before a masters at MIT, Paterson pairs first-hand farming instinct with aerospace-grade robotics. Since founding Aerobotics with Benji Meltzer in 2014, he has grown it into a global player that now analyzes a large share of the Florida citrus crop and has raised roughly $30 million, insisting the company is 'a farming company, enabled by technology' rather than a tech company that dabbles in farming.