Silver Fern awarded grant to expand AI-powered demand planning for greenhouse, nursery growers

Kentucky-based software company Silver Fern has been awarded a $100,000 Challenge Grant from the Lexington, Kentucky-based nonprofit Bluegrass AgTech Development Corporation to fund its Restock and Forecast AI-powered demand-planning modules for greenhouse and nursery growers.

The award was presented July 29 at BADC's Round 3 ceremony at the University of Kentucky's Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. According to BADC — which was founded in 2022 and is housed at the University of Kentucky's Coldstream Research Campus — Silver Fern is the first software company the organization has backed.

The grant funds Restock and Forecast, the Work Suite demand-planning modules for the horticulture industry. The company uses AI-powered machine learning with data points like weather, economic factors, sell-through and margin to predict what will sell, where and when, so growers can keep their customers' inventory optimized, according to the company.

In a 2026 pilot, the company said Restock delivered a material improvement over its existing forecasting and replenishment algorithms.

"This grant accelerates first-time access to AI-powered machine learning that helps growers drive profitability to their bottom line," said Silver Fern CEO Adam van Wingerden. "This is technology only the largest corporations have had access to. Thanks to AI and our team's investment, it's going to be available to growers up and down the market, specifically consignment and pay-by-scan growers getting inventory to the right store at the right time. In early development, we've already seen double-digit accuracy improvement against real live data. We're super excited about this, and we thank BADC for believing in the vision."

BADC's Challenge Grant program was seeded with $1 million from the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government and $1 million from the Kentucky Agricultural Development Fund.

Silver Fern thanked BADC, Executive Director Jacob Ball and BADC's founding partners: the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, Kentucky Department of Agriculture, Alltech and University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.