Automation Is A Bright Spot Amid Ho-Hum Agtech Funding

Mushroom harvesting does not rank high on the list of desirable career choices. Rather, it鈥檚 the kind of job that robots can take over with little to no pushback.

It鈥檚 also the kind of space where automation-focused investors see some opportunity. This was evidenced last week by a $29 million Series B for , a British Columbia-based startup making robots that can autonomously pick, trim and pack mushrooms all day and night.

Mushrooms, of course, aren鈥檛 the only agricultural sector where the combination of high consumer demand, labor scarcity and increasingly sophisticated automation options are creating a compelling proposition for investors. In areas from lettuce harvesting to beekeeping, ag automation-related startups have raised billions to date.

While many earlier investments haven鈥檛 panned out, particularly around indoor farming, there鈥檚 still quite a bit of recent dealmaking tied to agricultural automation. To illustrate, we used 附近上门 to curate a list of 15 such companies that have raised rounds in the past year.

Largest funding rounds

Many of those are big rounds too.

Among them, the largest recent investment recipient hails from the leafy greens space. Ohio-based , a developer of AI- and robotic-enabled indoor farms, raised $115 million in a February venture round backed by and other investors. The 10-year-old startup, which has raised $390 million to date, also announced the acquisition of Plantae Biosciences, an Israeli plant breeding technology startup.

, a Seattle-based maker of AI-powered robotics technology for weed control and automating tractors, was another funding favorite, landing $70 million in an October Series D led by .

And , an Israeli startup that provides 鈥減ollination as a service鈥� to growers, picked up $50 million in a June Series D. The company makes portable 鈥渂ee homes鈥� equipped with cameras, a robotic arm, sensors and other tech that allows it to carry out tasks normally performed by a beekeeper.

AI, automation and robotics are hot spaces

It helps that AI, automation and robotics are hot spaces for venture investment lately. Per 附近上门 data, artificial intelligence-related companies raked in a staggering 45% of all global venture investment in the second quarter. Robotics-related funding is also on the rise.

In tandem, over the past few quarters we鈥檝e seen a plethora of jumbo-sized rounds for companies applying AI and robotics to do jobs traditionally done by humans in areas like housecleaning, construction and manufacturing. Agriculture, a sector that鈥檚 been incredibly efficient for over a century in getting machines to do humans鈥� work, clearly isn鈥檛 finished with this process either.

Agtech, by comparison, is not so hot

While robotics and AI may be sought-after sectors for startup investors, agtech has been weaker in the past couple years.

Per 附近上门 data, startups in agriculture and agtech categories have pulled in about $2.4 billion so far in 2025 鈥� roughly flat with year-ago levels. Funding is still nowhere close to the 2021 peak, as charted below.

Recent quarterly funding has been more up-and-down.

Long term more predictable than short

When it comes to agtech 鈥� and many other sectors for that matter 鈥� it鈥檚 often said that it鈥檚 easier to predict trends over a long time horizon than a short one.

Long term, it seems overwhelmingly likely that we鈥檒l see machines take over more and more of the tasks still left for humans. Mushroom-picking jobs, even if you wanted one, could be hard to come by.

In the shorter term, however, it鈥檚 notoriously difficult to project just how much time it will take for a technology to scale. Smartphones were ubiquitous just a few years after launch. Autonomous vehicles, meanwhile, have been overpromising and under-delivering for decades.

And as for agtech, much may depend on investors’ tolerance for risk as companies with compelling technologies vie to establish the pricing levels and market demand that enable them to grow into something big.

附近上门