California-based Orchard Robotics has secured $22 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round that will fuel expansion in the near future, the company said.
Charlie Wu, a former Cornell student and Thiel fellow, founded Orchard Robotics in 2022 with the goal of giving farmers a more precise grasp on their crops through precision ag technology.
He says currently, only a fraction of crops undergo manual inspection, yet this sampling is used to make “multi-million decisions” around labor, crop inputs, and management.
“Solving farming is a data problem, and data is the bedrock of every farming decision. But the lack of precise, actionable data is the bottleneck.”
To address that problem, Orchard, which bills itself “the AI farming company,” emphasizes its technology’s role in improved data collection and management for farmers. Currently, its setup includes a camera system that mounts onto a tractor and uses AI to analyze pictures of fruit and make conclusions about plant health. The Orchard platform also includes farm management and system-of-record software for storing and managing all that data.
The company says it works with leading apple and grape farms in the US, as well as those growing blueberries, cherries, almonds, pistachios, citrus, and strawberries.
‘Providing the ground truth’ for agriculture
Quiet Capital and Shine Capital led the Series A round with participation from General Catalyst and others.
Michael Bloch, a partner at Quiet Capital who is also joining Orchard’s board, said farmers are typically forced to make critical decisions “based on imprecise data.” Orchard is “providing the ground truth this massive industry has desperately needed, turning guesswork into data-driven precision. We believe they will become an essential partner for every modern farm.”
The ag robotics space has been abuzz lately, with fundraise announcements from TRIC Robotics, Saga Robotics, and 4AG, to name a few. San Jose-based Bonsai Robotics acquired farm-ng, which has developed a lightweight, multi-purpose ‘bot for specialty crops, and John Deere scooped up GUSS Automation last week.
Orchard Robotics will use its new funding to double the size of its team and open a new office in San Francisco to support growth. The Series A funding brings the company’s total capital raised to more than $25 million.
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