Led · Series B · Jul 2025

4AG Robotics develops a plug-and-play robotic harvesting platform that uses AI-powered computer vision, precision suction grippers, and advanced motion control to autonomously harvest, trim, and pack mushrooms 24/7. The system is designed to retrofit into existing Dutch-rack infrastructure, enabling consistent quality, reduced labour costs, and real-time operational data for growers. Its robots are already in use across Canada, Ireland, and Australia, with new deployments planned in the Netherlands and the United States, and the company says it is active across five countries. 4AG reports deposits for over 40 additional robots and a fleet that can pick up to 1 million mushrooms per week. Financially, the company closed a $40M CAD Series B that brings total capital raised to $57.5M over the past two years after a $17.5M round in 2023. The funding is earmarked to expand manufacturing in Salmon Arm, BC, grow field service and customer success teams, and accelerate development of next-gen features such as punnet packing, disease detection, and AI-driven yield optimization. 4AG Robotics has developed an autonomous robotic harvester that scans mushroom beds, picks mushrooms, trims stems and places produce into containers for retail. Its systems are entirely autonomous and built to operate consistently without human intervention for well over 24 hours. Robots currently target indoor farms growing common white and brown mushrooms, which O’Connor says account for roughly 90% of global production. The company has completed multiple pilots, harvesting more than 13,000 pounds of mushrooms that were sold in North America. 4AG says it is entering the commercialization stage with two secured orders valued at just under $1 million each (one in Canada and one in Europe). The new funding will support scaling manufacturing capacity and proving the company can scale a robotics business. While focused on mushrooms today, 4AG says it may work with other indoor crops over time as it seeks to become a global leader in indoor-agriculture harvesting solutions.

Led · Equity · Apr 2025

Growers Edge is a Johnston, IA-based company that provides financial products and data-driven tools for agricultural retailers, manufacturers, and lenders. The company offers a suite of products including its Crop Plan Warranty Program, land and climate intelligence solutions, digital mortgage lending products, and input lending tools. As a fintech platform it delivers data-backed products designed to reduce risk and promote agricultural innovation and growth. Growers Edge acquired AQUAOSO Technologies, expanding its farmland valuation tool to cover over 144 million acres, and has surpassed one million acres protected through its Crop Plan Warranty program. The company raised $25M and intends to use the funds to scale its financial solutions, expand its reach with more ag retailers and lenders, and drive adoption of climate-smart agricultural products and practices across the U.S. The business is led by CEO Matt Hansen. Growers Edge, founded in 2017, offers financial solutions to agtech vendors via an intelligence platform that designs warranty-backed crop management plans. The platform uses federal crop insurance actual production history (APH) data dating back 4–10 years to inform pricing and coverage. Retailers white‑label these warranty-backed plans, which typically cover 90–100% of a farmer’s APH yields. Its outcome-based warranty model issues refunds in cash or product if performance metrics are not met. The company leverages digital agriculture software to build predictive models that link product use to expected outcomes. Financially, Growers Edge recently closed a $5 million venture debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank and announced a $40 million Series B last summer. Management says the debt will enable faster growth with less equity dilution. Growers Edge Financial builds financial technology products and solutions designed to de-risk agtech adoption for farmers by offering tailored financial risk-management and data-backed prescriptions. The company leverages proprietary data and analytics to create product warranties and economic incentives that encourage technology adoption without selling seed, inputs, or equipment. Growers Edge positions its offerings to boost farm profitability and support long-term financial and environmental resiliency. The business plans to use fresh capital to grow its data science team and advance its AI platform. Management intends to expand market penetration across the U.S. and globally to accelerate adoption of sustainable ag innovations. The company emphasizes partnerships with ag retailers and technology and agent partners to scale distribution and impact.

Participated · Series A · Jan 2025

Bonsai Robotics builds vision-based physical AI solutions for orchard and specialty-crop agriculture, with a flagship product called Visionsteer™ that offers data insights, crop analysis, job planning, notifications and autonomous vehicle control. The company’s technology is designed to operate in GNSS-denied environments and without cellular or internet connectivity, addressing harsh field conditions like dust, darkness, debris and vibration. Bonsai has deployed over 40 integrated autonomous units across the U.S. and Australia and has collected data from operations on more than 500,000 acres. The new funding will be used to enhance its vision-based autonomous software, expand its physical AI platform and dataset, grow OEM partnerships, and accelerate commercialization. Bonsai positions its approach as addressing labor shortages, rising grower costs, climate change and food-security challenges in specialty agriculture. Bonsai Robotics, based in San Jose, CA, provides computer vision-based robotic automation solutions for harsh, off-road environments such as agriculture. Its systems integrate with OEM equipment to enable autonomy and can operate without GPS in adverse conditions including dust, debris and vibration. Led by CEO Tyler Niday, the company works with OEMs including OMC and Flory Industries and with California growers who report significant efficiency gains amid a severe labor shortage. The company raised $13.5M in Seed funding and plans to use the proceeds to accelerate its product roadmap and invest in hiring and sales and marketing. Its product focus is on ruggedizing autonomy for environments where traditional GPS-reliant approaches fail.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2024

EarthOptics leverages advances in soil-sensing technologies, genomics, and data science to deliver predictive insights into chemical, physical, and biological soil properties. It combines lab-based analysis with field-based sensors to give farmers and ranchers actionable recommendations to optimize spending and unlock sustainable farming opportunities. The company completed a strategic merger with Pattern Ag, combining EarthOptics’ proprietary field-based sensing technologies with Pattern Ag’s lab-based analysis to offer comprehensive soil data. Led by CEO Lars Dyrud, EarthOptics operates offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Emeryville, California; Arlington and Blacksburg, Virginia; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Fayetteville, Arkansas, and maintains two laboratories in Emeryville and Memphis, Tennessee. The company intends to use new funding to accelerate technological innovation, broaden its geographic reach, and consolidate its position as an authoritative source for soil insights. EarthOptics develops next-generation soil-sensing technologies that combine ground-based sensors, satellites, physical soil samples, machine learning models, and agronomic expertise to deliver detailed soil measurements. The company's platform provides insights to help farmers optimize fertilizer applications, inform tillage decisions, and quantify carbon sequestration. EarthOptics plans to use its latest funding to expand access to its tools and deliver hyper-accurate soil insights. Founded in 2018 and based in Arlington, VA, the company serves growers and ranchers seeking data-driven land-management decisions. The company is led by CEO Lars Dyrud. The article reports a recent financing that will support its growth and product expansion efforts. EarthOptics has developed an imaging suite that uses ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic induction to produce deep maps of soil physical and chemical composition. Its commercial products, GroundOwl and C-Mapper (C for carbon), reconcile no-contact sensor data with traditional lab samples via machine learning trained on tens of thousands of ground-truth measurements. The hardware can be mounted on ordinary tractors or trucks and pulls readings every few feet, reducing physical sampling from hundreds of samples to dozens. The company’s outputs can be used to create meter-scale treatment maps or to feed variable-depth robotic field machinery such as smart tillers. Management positions the product as a cheaper, faster, and more precise alternative to traditional soil sampling and as foundational data for automated and robotic farming. Financially, EarthOptics raised a $10.3M A round to scale its two existing products and to develop a moisture-mapping product.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2022

BeeHero provides a subscription Precision Pollination as a Service (PPaaS) that deploys proprietary in-hive and in-field sensors to collect audio and biological data, analyzed with machine learning to deliver actionable insights to growers and beekeepers. The platform enables growers to optimize crop yields and quality by monitoring pollination effectiveness and offers beekeepers visibility into hive health. BeeHero manages over 200,000 hives across five continents and records 10 million signals daily. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in California with R&D in Tel Aviv and employs about 60 people. Financially, BeeHero has reported revenue growth of over 270% year-over-year for the past three years and surpassed $44 million ARR in 2023; it has attracted $64 million in funding to date and receives grants from the Israel Innovation Authority, EU Horizon 2020, BIRD and others. Future plans cited include premium beekeeper solutions such as insurance and working capital, and bee-pollinated commodities price-risk hedging products based on its data. BeeHero offers a Precision-Pollination-as-a-Service platform that uses advanced data analytics, machine learning, and low-cost IoT sensors to bring transparency and efficiency to commercial crop pollination. The company has built what it describes as the world’s largest bee and pollination dataset to optimize pollination and improve crop yields. BeeHero enables commercial beekeepers to remotely track and monitor apiaries and provides growers with real-time insights to support decision-making. The company reports close to 100 thousand acres of high-value crops currently pollinated with its service and has begun expansion into Australia, Europe, South Africa, and South America. BeeHero plans to integrate new platform tools for an even more accurate, real-time view of crop development and is increasing investment in R&D. To date the company has raised $64M and intends to use new funding to accelerate growth and adoption of its Sustainable Agriculture Ecosystem. BeeHero equips honeybee hives with IoT sensors and analytics to track bee movements and health in near real time, enabling early detection of issues like mite infestations. Its platform aims to increase crop yields and hive health while reducing labor by replacing infrequent manual hive checks. BeeHero works with several top almond growers in California and expects to manage 100,000 hives by year-end, aiming to become the largest pollination provider in the U.S. (it is currently the fourth largest). The company plans to expand beyond almonds and the U.S. into berries, avocados, apples, sunflower, soybeans and greenhouse crops like tomatoes, with Australia and Europe on the roadmap depending on partnerships. BeeHero is building a large bee-activity database and has research partnerships with the World Bee Project and Japan’s Ministry of Culture. Financially, BeeHero recently raised a $15 million Series A and won $4 million in grants to fund scaling and international expansion. BeeHero equips honeybee hives with off-the-shelf sensors (temperature, humidity, sound, accelerometer), pollen traps, and computer vision to monitor colony health and pollination efficiency and surface insights via an online dashboard. The platform provides early warnings for issues like mite infestations and aims to reduce colony collapse by delivering actionable insights (e.g., queen stress, pollination quality) rather than raw data. The company reports testing on nearly 20,000 hives and cites yield improvements of 30–35% in soybeans and 70–100% in apples and cashews in South America, as well as mortality reductions of 20–25% in some cases. BeeHero positions its service as “pollination as a service” for large-scale agriculture and is focused on expanding operations into the U.S., targeting high-adoption precision-agriculture segments such as California almonds. It emphasizes low-cost, robust hardware and ongoing R&D, exploring additional crops, improved metrics, and partnerships with universities to apply hive data in academic studies. The company has completed a $4M seed financing to support expansion and continued product development.