CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (WCIA) — A Champaign company has been named the regional champion of a worldwide contest for startups.

The University of Illinois’ Research Park has been hosting Champaign-Urbana AgTech Week for the past five days and part of the schedule of events was the agriculture and food regional of the Startup World Cup. The World Cup is a global series with over 100 regionals across over 60 countries, culminating in a grand finale in Silicon Valley, California.

However, this is the first year the World Cup includes a regional round focused on agriculture and food technology.

Ten startups were named regional finalists a week ago and they were given the chance Thursday to showcase their ideas at the iHotel and Illinois Conference Center.

“It’s a great opportunity for a community that’s surrounded by agriculture, to focus on ag technologies and the opportunities in agriculture and our ability to bring new technology out of the university and commercialize that here locally,” said Chris Harbout, CEO of Frenzy Crop Systems.

The regional title ultimately went to EarthSense, Inc., a company based in Champaign that creates AI-powered farming robots that target labor shortages and rising costs.

The company was originally created to serve companies in Asia that manage over 10 million hectares of land.

EarthSense now gets a chance to compete for a $1 million investment in the Startup World Cup grand finale in Silicon Valley this October.