<p>Digital technologies are increasingly promoted as essential to the future of dairy farming, yet little is known about the moral, political and strategic assumptions embedded in how these tools are described. This paper examines how dairy tech startups imagine the future of the sector and how these visions shape ideas about good farming, responsible care, and legitimate innovation. Drawing on qualitative analysis of public communications and interviews from more than forty startups across Europe, North America, and Oceania, the study identifies four interconnected imaginaries - Efficiency, Welfare, Naturalness, and Data Optimism - that structure how digital futures are presented. Across these imaginaries, startups frame the dairy sector as being in crisis and depict digitalisation as the necessary response. Sensors, dashboards, and automated systems appear not only as technical aids but as devices through which startups claim strategic relevance, moral legitimacy, and environmental responsibility. At the same time, each imaginary contains contradictions: biological variation persists despite promises of control; sensor-based welfare narrows the meaning of care; engineered environments are framed as “natural”; and data is cast as objective despite opaque algorithms. These tensions reveal how responsibility shifts from structural pressures to individual farmers and how alternative forms of knowledge, labour, and production become less visible. The analysis demonstrates that startup narratives do important governance work by defining which futures appear credible and desirable. The paper concludes that understanding these moral imaginaries is essential for developing more inclusive and transparent approaches to agricultural innovation, and offers specific policy recommendations for welfare metrics, data governance, funding criteria, and labour assessment.</p>