Halter, now incorporated in California but with most of its R&D and management in Auckland, was founded in 2016 by ex-Rocket Lab’s Craig Piggott after his boss Sir Peter Beck gave him his blessing and financial backing.
Other early backers included Sir Stephen Tindall’s K1W1 fund and Thiel’s Founders Fund, which both put money into a $7m Series A round in 2018.
Beck also introduced Piggott to one of Rocket Lab’s key Silicon Valley investors, Bessemer, which also put money into Halter.
Piggott, the son of Waikato sharemilkers who often clocked 100-hour weeks, tested his first smart collar start-up on the small farm his parents later bought in Morrinsville.
His firm today employs around 350 staff and its systems manage more than 700,000 head of cattle.
Halter has recently expanded into the US, where huge Texas cattle ranches are among its targets, and into Australia, where now-updated animal welfare rules in some states have previously inhibited its progress.
(While Halter’s collars use electric pulses as one of their cues, Piggott says they deliver a tiny fraction of the charge of an electric fence. Halter’s product has been approved by the AgResearch Animal Ethics Committee, among other bodies.)
Tracking to pass Fonterra within 3 years
Halter does not reveal financials or the number of farmers signed up for its systems, which have recently expanded to include pasture management. AI is now heavily in the mix.
But its results have been sufficiently promising to gain big increases in its valuation each time it’s raised new capital.
“At the pace they’re growing, it will take Halter 11 quarters to be worth more than Fonterra,” Icehouse Ventures chief executive Robbie Paul said earlier today, speaking to the Herald from the US, where he was watching the Miami Open.
“It’s a great testament to the impact tech can have on New Zealand.”
4x return
Icehouse Ventures, one of Halter’s earliest backers, has put progressively more money into the smart cow firm over multiple rounds – from the $100,000 it chipped in to Halter’s seed round to follow-ups of $500,000, $1m, $4m, $10m, $20m and larger investments.
“We’ve invested $105m to date,” Paul told the Herald this morning.
His firm’s stake in Halter currently has a holding value of $409m.
The huge gains have made Halter the fund’s top-performing investment. That made it Icehouse’s largest investment by a factor of three.
“Halter is worth as much as our next 10 largest investments combined.”
Icehouse’s top 10 investments include its minority stakes in Crimson, Tracksuit, Dawn Aerospace, Partly, Hnry, Sharesies and OpenStar.
Paul wouldn’t comment on the Bloomberg report or Halter’s possible private equity valuation for its next raise.
Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook and a cofounder of one of the hugely successful and controversial data-mining and “spook” software firm Palantir, whose shares have tripled in value over the past year as its market cap has hit $360b, has been a New Zealand citizen since 2011.
Thiel has invested in multiple start-ups and bought land in Queenstown.
The billionaire has been rarely sighted in New Zealand and has recently been winding down local investments, but Founders Fund partner Scott Nolan has made annual visits to New Zealand and is well known in the local start-up and venture capital communities.
Innovator of the Year
Piggott, who could not be immediately reached for comment, was named Innovator of the Year at the 2026 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year awards on Thursday.
With his privately held firm now incorporated in the US, his holdings are not public. By the time of a Series D round, dilution has usually whittled a founder’s stake down to between 10-20%, but it can vary by company.
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
