Autonomous Cattle Mustering

On sprawling cattle stations across Queensland and New South Wales, mustering thousands of head of cattle is backbreaking, time-consuming work. GrazeMate is replacing the traditional stockman on horseback with fully autonomous drones that fly to a paddock, position themselves around the mob, and move cattle using reinforcement learning models trained to mimic real stockmanship techniques.

Founded by 19-year-old Sam Rogers, who grew up on a North Queensland cattle station and saw the problem firsthand, GrazeMate raised $1.2M in pre-seed funding and was accepted into Y Combinator's W26 batch. The drones don't just herd — they also estimate animal weights, measure grass biomass, monitor water levels, and flag sick animals for attention.

Scale and Expansion

GrazeMate is already mustering thousands of cattle weekly across 1.7 million acres in Queensland and New South Wales. The company has commitments covering over 500,000 cattle, with a waiting list of nearly 2 million more. With proven traction in Australia's rugged outback, GrazeMate is now expanding to California, bringing its autonomous herding technology to the American market.