Future of farming? Carbon Robotics raises $70M for AI robots that blast weeds with lasers

Seattle startup Carbon Robotics raised $70 million in the latest vote of confidence from investors in the company’s agriculture technology platform that helps farmers eliminate weeds without the use of herbicides.

San Francisco firm BOND invested for the first time and led the Series D round, which also included Nvidia’s venture capital arm.

Carbon Robotics has raised $157 million since launching in 2018.

The fresh cash will help scale its business, which has doubled revenue over the past 12 months. The company declined to provide specific revenue metrics.

Carbon Robotics’ “LaserWeeder” machine attaches to the back of a tractor and uses an array of AI-powered technology to detect plants in fields and then target and eliminate weeds with lasers, without disturbing the soil microbiology. Each machine relies on 24 Nvidia graphics processing units, processing 4.7 million high-resolution images per hour.

“The brain of the machine is all software and advanced AI techniques,” said Paul Mikesell, founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics. The company has also developed patented hardware mechanisms.

The 20-foot machine helps farmers both eliminate herbicide-resistant weeds and stop using herbicides, which can be harmful to humans.

The robots also take care of repetitive and dangerous work, according to Mikesell, allowing farmers to move their employees to other tasks.

“There are a lot of jobs,” he said, noting the farming labor shortage. “We’re just getting rid of the worst ones to be doing.”

Mikesell is a longtime technologist and entrepreneur who previously co-founded data storage company Isilon Systems (which sold for $2.25 billion in 2010) and led an infrastructure engineering group at Uber for four years.

“The real promise of AI is not going to be just large language models and ChatGPT,” he said. “It’s going to be, what does it actually do for your life?”

Carbon Robotics stands out in an agriculture-tech industry that has seen venture capital funding decline by 60% since 2021, according to a report from McKinsey. Agtech startups have struggled to scale as they face adoption challenges with farmers, McKinsey said in a separate report.

“While many companies are exploring speculative tech solutions in this space, Carbon Robotics has proven it can not only execute but also scale innovations that directly address farmers’ needs,” said Mood Rowghani, general partner at BOND who is joining the company’s board.

Mikesell said part of the startup’s secret sauce is its focus on customer service and working closely with farmers. He said his team lived and worked from trailers on farms months at a time.

“You can’t just design and test these machines from the comfort of your office. You have to be out there in the fields,” he said. “You’ve got to put in that time to really figure out what works and what doesn’t work.”

Mikesell said other agtech companies have received bad advice from their investors to use a “robots-as-a-service” model, in which they lease out equipment and generate cash via recurring revenue, similar to traditional software-as-a-service. That “just does not work in agtech,” he said.

“I think that’s where a lot of the problems come from, honestly — people trying to map old school business models onto AI robotics and realizing it doesn’t work until it’s too late,” Mikesell added.

Investors laud the leadership and vision of Mikesell, who also founded database startup Clustrix in 2006 (acquired by MariaDB) and was a manager at Seattle-based RealNetworks from 1998 to 2001. He earned a computer science degree from the University of Washington.

Erik Benson, managing director at Seattle-based Voyager Capital, called Mikesell a “once-in-a-generation talent who represents the good side of Tesla’s Elon Musk.”

Mikesell spends “hundreds of days a year in the field with farmers compared to his competitors who sit in their ivory towers in Silicon Valley not wanting to get their hands dirty,” Benson said via email.

Benson said the company is the fastest growing startup he’s seen in 26 years as a venture capitalist.

Mikesell hinted that the company has plans to develop new robots for farms and beyond agriculture.

“I want to see more AI robotics get out there into the world,” he said. “I think it’s coming, and I’m proud and happy to be at the forefront of that.”

Carbon Robotics did not disclose the price of the “LaserWeeder” but Mikesell said some farmers recoup the cost within a year based on savings from using the machine. He said agriculture banks are becoming familiar with Carbon Robotics and more willing to provide loans.

The company also offers a software platform that gives details on weeds and crops in the field. Farmers pay an annual fee for service and customer support, along with regular software updates.

Customers include farmers across the U.S., as well as in Europe and Australia. The fresh cash will help Carbon Robotics expand into Asia.

Carbon is also opening a new 24,000 square-foot manufacturing plant in Richland, Wash., across the state from its corporate headquarters.

Other investors in the latest round include Anthos Capital; FUSE, Ignition; Revolution; Sozo Ventures; and Voyager.

“AI and robots and lasers and working with farmers,” said Mikesell. “This is the best job in the world.”