Bonsai Robotics Raises $15 Million to Help Combat Farm Labor Shortage

AgTech startup Bonsai Robotics has raised $15 million to develop machines that can navigate orchards on their own to harvest almonds and other produce, helping address labor shortages that risk driving up grocery bills.

Bison Ventures led the Series A funding round, which included money from Cibus Capital, a new investor in the two-year-old company. Existing investors including Acre Venture Partners, Congruent Ventures, Fall Line Capital and Serra Ventures also participated.

The San Jose, Calif.-based startup is designing robots that use vision-based technology to help harvest tree crops. Autonomous tree shakers and sprayers are faster and use less fuel than standard machinery—and can alleviate a shortfall of farmhands, one of growers’ most pressing problems, said Tyler Niday, the company’s co-founder and chief executive.

Bonsai’s Series A financing comes against a backdrop of rising concerns about staffing U.S. farms.

America’s food supply chain relies on a predominantly immigrant workforce—including many undocumented workers—for jobs such as picking fruit, applying pesticides and operating machinery. President Trump has promised to crack down on people illegally in the U.S.

Bonsai wants to use its latest funding round to get its technology to more customers, and to adapt it for more kinds of crops, Niday said.

Trials have centered on almond, pistachio and walnut orchards in the U.S. and Australia. Growers of specialty crops, such as tree nuts and fruits, have by far the highest labor costs across farm types, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Before Bonsai, Niday helped develop autonomous tractors for open-field farming at Blue River Technology, a company bought by Deere & Co. in 2017.

But Niday, who began his career designing machinery for tree crops, observed that orchards appeared to be missing out on the movement known as precision agriculture.

GPS-guided tractors helped revolutionize farming crops like corn and cotton. But, in orchards, tree canopies can block a GPS signal. High levels of dust and debris also challenge traditional perception technologies, Niday said.

Orchard owners consequently still rely on machinery operated by workers to harvest crops.

“There’s just such a big gap there from a technology perspective and really a huge, huge, huge labor issue that we needed to solve,” Niday said.

Bonsai’s autonomous tree shakers can run at roughly twice the speed of conventional processes, said Niday. That means farmers can harvest crops with half the number of machines. They use cameras to see where they are going and can tell a tree trunk from an irrigation pipe.

“Their vision-based approach to agricultural automation has the potential to transform how specialty crops are grown,” said Tom Biegala, founding partner of Bison Ventures.

Bonsai faces competition in developing smart tractors that can spray or mow orchards. Deere said this month it has developed an autonomous orchard tractor for spraying crops. Its technology uses Lidar sensors to address the challenge of dense canopies.

Bonsai currently has no competition in autonomous harvest machinery for the nut industry, Niday said. Bonsai has patents pending.

Bonsai’s Series A builds on a $13.5 million seed financing in 2023. Acre Venture Partners, who led the seed round, remains Bonsai’s top investor.

Bonsai’s biggest challenge has been getting a diverse data set for its AI model, so machines using its technology can pull into any orchard and start work. “Occasionally, it’ll detect something that’s not there,” Niday said. But that data is fed back to further improve the model.

Niday has spent the past two weeks visiting Australia, the world’s second-biggest almond producer, after the U.S., where an annual harvest is about to begin. Bonsai has 31 machines in Australia for the harvest.

Labor in Australia can be even harder for growers to source than in the U.S., especially since the Covid-19 pandemic upended the usual flow of seasonal workers, Niday said.

Bonsai wants to branch out geographically and to a wider variety of crops. This year it will pilot autonomous equipment at citrus and macadamia-nut operations for jobs such as spraying and mowing rather than harvesting, Niday said.

Lowering the cost of running orchards via automation should be a win for consumers, said Niday.

“If we’re able to have better practices, manage trees more efficiently and bring in more precision, it all leads to better and lower-cost products, ultimately,” he said.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/bonsai-robotics-raises-15-million-to-help-combat-farm-labor-shortage-8556caf5