🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week: Bonsai

✍️ Notes from the Editors

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Automation. It’s everywhere. It involves the company we’re talking about. And the sponsor for this article. And honestly the world at large.

When productivity is at stake, automating is what makes a difference. You might think agriculture is slept on as an industry, but the fact is that there’s a lot of room to make farmers more productive.

Enjoy this week’s deep dive by Derek Wong. We’re gonna go eat some almonds.

- Arek and Ethan 🦄

Vision-based automation for equipment manufacturers

Bonsai Robotics provides software for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to turn their orchard harvesting equipment autonomous. Using equipment similar to self-driving technology like Tesla’s, Bonsai is building software that can autonomously traverse orchards using AI SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). Where traditional technologies, such as GPS, stereovision, time of flight sensors, and LIDAR-based autonomy systems fail, AI SLAM can traverse through dust storms, uneven terrains, and unexpected obstacles.

🔗 Check it out: bonsairobotics.ai

💰 Business Model

Bonsai has a SaaS subscription model and charges clients a first-year activation fee.

📈 Traction and Fundraising

• Raised $10.5 million in seed funding from Acre Ventures Partners, E14 Congruent, Serra Ventures, Fall Line Capital, SNR Ventures, Andros, and angels including Travis Deyle (founder of Cobalt Robotics), Lee Redden (founder of Blue River Tech), and Matt Barnard

• Scaling up production to meet overwhelming demand

👫 Founders

• Tyler Niday, CEO: Over 10 years of engineering experience, previously Head of Engineering, Construction Autonomy @ Blue River Technology, Masters @ MIT in Engineering and Management

• Ugur Oezdemir, CTO: 15 years of software engineering experience, previously Senior Manager @ Blue River Technology

💼 Opportunities

• Grower Success Lead

• Motion Planning Engineer

• Senior Computer Vision Engineer

• Senior SLAM Engineer

• Senior Computer Vision Engineer (3D Vision)

• Senior ML Ops Engineer - Data

• Field Application Engineer

🔮 Our Analysis

The robot takeover has already started — and they’re coming for our nuts. 

Almonds are one of the most valuable crops, not only in California but for the nation.

California produces almost 80% of the world’s almonds and 100% of the U.S. supply, accounting for almost $5 billion in sales. Everyone is eating more almonds, as the quantity of almonds produced has tripled since 2000. 

Yet, with persistent labor shortages, droughts, and increasing demand, there is a large opportunity to capitalize on this growth. As policy issues continue to be debated, stricter immigration and labor regulations would increase labor costs by 22%. Harvesting can be a long, difficult process, hurt by the lack of skilled workers. This is where Bonsai Robotics hopes to help.

Taking care of a bonsai tree has become an art in itself. Many bonsai masters spend over a decade learning and training how to give the proper care to a bonsai tree. Bonsai Robotics aims to help every tree to get the Bonsai tree care. While companies like Cruise and Waymo attempt to perfect autonomous city driving, Bonsai is perfecting orchard driving. Often, orchards have dust and debris that spring up to block GPS signals and cause slowdowns for autonomous vehicles. But with its proprietary AI SLAM technologies, it avoids any of those potential pitfalls.

By building software on top of pre-existing harvesters, Bonsai can iterate fast. With its partnerships with Orchard Machinery Corporation (OMC), the first company to have its machines built atop, it can adjust its software to automate a machine in 2-3 weeks. Its preliminary results have been found to double harvest speed. With this incredible increase, Danfoss, a multi-billion dollar corporation, has partnered with Bonsai to implement its software on Danfoss harvesters. 

As Bonsai robotics integrates into the almond industry, it becomes clear that the robot takeover isn’t just a distant sci-fi story, but a present reality, where machines are quite literally coming for our nuts. The future of agriculture is built today.

📚 Further Reading

• Eyeing vision-based autonomy for farm equipment, Bonsai Robotics raises $10.5M [TechCrunch]

• Bonsai Robotics announced a $ 10.5 million seed round [Future Farming] 

• Bonsai Robotics brings in $13.5M to bring AVs off-road [The Robot Report]

Written by Derek Wong

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