Harvest Automation designs and commercializes the HV-100 robot, nicknamed Harvey, an autonomous mobile system that moves, organizes and consolidates potted plants for nurseries, farms and greenhouses. The robots perform highly repetitive, physically demanding tasks autonomously, which the company says can reduce physical labor by about 40 percent. Harvest is seeing product validation with first customers and plans to use new funding to further commercialize the HV-100 and expand deployments. The company was founded in 2007 (formerly Q Robotics) by former iRobot employees and a CERN scientist and is based in Billerica. Management emphasizes bringing smart, mobile, adaptive robotics into agriculture to work alongside people. To date Harvest has raised $23.5 million in total funding. Harvest Automation builds mobile-robot technology intended to automate a variety of traditionally manual agricultural tasks. The company’s approach uses teams of small, highly intelligent machines that work alongside human laborers to perform the most physically demanding parts of those tasks. Its robots are designed to operate safely with people and to lower labor costs for agricultural operations. The firm says this system can replace portions of manual work across multiple tasks in the industry. Financially, the company recently completed a financing indicating ongoing capital needs to support its technology and deployment. The company is located in Billerica, Massachusetts, and seeks to scale automation within the agricultural sector. Harvest Automation builds cooperative robotics systems designed to work alongside humans to improve productivity and working conditions across multiple industries. The company is initially targeting the U.S. agriculture sector, citing a $300bn market where roughly one-third of crops are still produced using mostly manual labor. Harvest Automation plans to announce product details in 2011. The business closed a $5.3M Series A financing to advance its product and commercialization efforts. Investors in the round include Founder Collective (which committed $1.3M) and existing backers Life Sciences Partners, Cultivian Ventures and the Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation. The company has also formed an advisory board that includes Colin Angle and Mick Mountz to provide executive guidance.

Total raised

$20M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Oct 2013