Orchard Robotics, initiated at Cornell University by CEO Charles Wu, has secured $3.8 million through a Pre-Seed and Seed funding phase. The Pre-Seed round was led by Contrary, while the Seed round saw leadership from General Catalyst and contributions from Humba Ventures, Soma Capital, Correlation Ventures, VU Venture Partners, Genius Ventures, and angel investors including Howard Lerman, Joshua Browder, Rory and Kieran O'Reilly.
The company focuses on enhancing fruit farming efficiency through an AI-driven vision system mounted on vehicles, which collects detailed data on fruit characteristics such as size, count, color, and growth rate. This technology aims to provide fruit farmers with precise data to optimize crop management, addressing the challenge of managing vast orchards with potentially millions of trees and significant fruit production. The goal is to enable more sustainable, efficient, and profitable farming practices by moving away from traditional methods that rely on small sample sizes for decision-making.
Source: globalagtechinitiative.com
Photo source: Orchard Robotics