Small Robot Company builds a suite of lightweight field robots (Tom, Dick and Harry) and an AI brain (Wilma) to deliver PerPlant farming: identifying, locating and treating individual plants autonomously. Its commercial offering includes Tom V3, an autonomous mapping and monitoring robot built by Tharsus, and the firm says it has commercialised a per‑plant monitoring service. Customers named in the announcement include Waitrose and the National Trust, and the company reports farmers covering almost 70,000 hectares have prepaid, invested or expressed interest. The firm has demonstrated autonomous weed‑killing using electricity and plans customer trials next season; it is also in early discussions with three large seed and nutrient companies to monitor trial plots. Financially, the company reported a Crowdcube raise of £3,434,851 from 1,974 investors at a £15,000,000 pre‑money valuation, offering 18.63% equity at a £0.66 share price, and notes prior Crowdcube campaigns and grant support totaling previous raises of about £4.3m plus £1.2m of IUK grants. The announcement also notes HMRC has provided Advanced Assurance and guidance on EIS tax relief eligibility for investors from the Future Fund (CLN) round. Small Robot Company develops agricultural robots including a non-chemical weed‑zapping machine called “Dick” and a monitoring robot called “Tom” aimed at commercial weed mapping services. The company closed a Crowdcube equity crowdfunding campaign at £2.1m to fund field trials for Dick and manufacture a fleet of Tom monitoring robots. VC firm 7percent Ventures led the round with a £200,000 investment, and 1,759 investors participated in the crowdraise. The raise brings SRC’s total funding to date to £4.84m. Management says the funds will support manufacturing and the next phase of commercial delivery. The company faces sector headwinds such as regulatory requirements and hardware challenges around versatility, affordability, connectivity, energy, and reliability, but sees potential tailwinds from reduced chemical use and labour constraints. Small Robots Company is a UK agri‑tech business developing a fleet of lightweight field robots (Tom, Dick, Harry) and an AI operating system called Wilma to enable a Farming-as-a-Service model. The robots are intended to collect data, care for crops (with claimed chemical savings up to 95%), and place seeds with minimal soil disturbance. As of the campaign update, the robots have not yet been deployed in fields; the company says it can begin generating revenues in the second half of 2019 with Tom and Wilma and will develop Dick and Harry to accelerate growth. The company reports it has spoken to more than 100 farmers and has signed up 20 farms as first customers (the campaign reports both £90K in pre-sales and that those 20 farms each paid a £5,000 deposit). Small Robots Company also won a £565K Innovate UK award in 2018 and says it received £90K in pre-sales earlier in the year. The company positions itself against heavy farm machinery, aiming to capture share of a precision farming market projected at $5B by 2020.

Total raised

$9M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Aug 2021