Autonomous Farming Startup Burro Raises $10.9 mln in Series A Financing

By Juan Fajardo Juan Fajardo has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team
Published on September 30, 2021

Burro, an autonomous farming startup based in Philadelphia previously known as Augean Robotics, has raised $10.9 million in Series A funding to automate the agriculture industry

The round, which was co-led by S2G Ventures and Toyota Ventures, brings the total funding raised by the startup to $12.7 million. New investors like F-Prime Capital and the Cibus Enterprise Fund, joined existing investors ffVC and Radicle Growth’s participation in the round. Sanjeev Krishnan, Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer at S2G Ventures, said about the firm’s participation:

“Burro’s product is in high demand because the team is hyper-focused on understanding and solving real agriculture use cases in a way that is simple and accessible. We are thrilled to back Charlie and the team at Burro as they work side-by-side with growers to improve the social, environmental and economic outcomes of farm operations.”

Founded in 2017, Burro develops and offers the only plug-and-play autonomous people-scale robot aiming to help growers to boost profitability and mitigate labor shortages while also setting the foundation for more comprehensive automation. Its patent-pending robot called Pop Up Autonomy enables everyone in a working environment to easily become an operator.

The robots designed by the startup use computer vision and AI to carry various payloads, with one of them allowing the harvesting of 48% more fruit per day. At this time, there’re 90 robots deployed in table grape fields covering 100-300 miles a day autonomously, six days a week. Charlie Andersen, CEO of Burro, said about the startup’s unique approach by stating:

“Many autonomy companies beginning in agriculture have focused first on autonomous tractors, autonomous weeding, and harvesting, where they try to comprehensively automate incredibly hard technical tasks, and often struggle to scale into a large market – we’ve started instead with collaborative people-scale robots that help people by moving heavy things around,”

The new capital will be allocated by the autonomous farming startup to boost the expansion of its robotic solutions, which will allow its users to improve working conditions and increase productivity to compensate for the labor shortages that have plagued the agriculture industry.

By Juan Fajardo Juan Fajardo has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team

Juan Fajardo is a News Desk Editor at Grit Daily. He is a software developer, tech and blockchain enthusiast, and writer, areas in which he has contributed to several projects. A jack of all trades, he was born in Bogota, Colombia but currently lives in Argentina after having traveled extensively. Always with a new interest in mind and a passion for entrepreneurship, Juan is a news desk editor at Grit Daily where it covers everything related to the startup world.

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