Listen to this article

Carbon Robotics Laserweeder is a smart implement that autonomously destroys weeds. | Credit: Carbon Robotics

Seattle-based Carbon Robotics has raised new funding for its Laserweeder smart implement that autonomous controls weeds on farms. The new investment comes from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm.

Financial details of this latest deal were not released. However, Carbon Robotics closed a Series C round in April 2023 and has raised a total of $74 million to date since it was founded in 2018, according to Crunchbase.

Lasers instantly kill weeds

At the heart of the solution is a high-powered laser that vaporizes unwanted weeds from a farmer’s field. The Carbon Robotics LaserWeeder uses 24 NVIDIA GPUs to process the images of plants in the ground in real-time while identifying weeds from crops. The laser then applies light energy to the unwanted plants, killing them instantly. The entire solution is deployed as a “smart implement” and pulled behind a tractor through the field.

Growers can use the solution periodically through the early growing season to reduce the weed pressure from the field and enable crops to thrive.

Carbon Robotics said the LaserWeeder processes 4.7 million high-resolution images per hour and can eradicate 5,000 weeds per minute with sub-millimeter precision. The company also said its agricultural image dataset consists of 25 million labeled plants and more than 30,000 crop and weed models. The LaserWeeder also captures real-time metrics on crops and weeds and sends them to the cloud, providing farmers with actionable visual insights into their field farming operations at any time, from anywhere.

AI foundation models for Agtech

Carbon Robotics CEO Paul Mikesell told The Robot Report “we can deploy the LaserWeeder into a new field, in a new region, run it over a few acres of land and within 24 hrs, train a new model specific for crop and weeds common to the region”.

“We’ve built and innovated in the world of foundation models for plant identification,” he added. “We built the [AI] model from the ground up. So if you want to think about it that way, it is the foundation model for agricultural plant identification. This is enabling the company to quickly expand globally into new regions, and will be a key use of the additional funding [from NVentures].”

Carbon Robotics is growing

Mikesell said Carbon Robotics grew its revenue 3x YoY and is on pace to continue the revenue growth as the company matures the product and begins to produce the LaserWeeder in higher volumes. The company is expanding its sales and channel network to support new customers in new regions.

“AI and advanced robotics have immense potential in addressing the myriad of challenges present in agriculture,” said Mohamed Siddeek, corporate vice president and head of NVentures. “Carbon Robotics’ innovative solution improves farming practices to increase sustainability and improve the quality of produce available to consumers.”