Verdant Robotics is a Hayward, California agtech company building AI-driven precision farming robots. Its flagship SharpShooter is a tractor-pulled implement that uses computer vision and a bank of aiming nozzles to treat individual plants - weeding, thinning, fertilizing and spraying with millimeter accuracy - instead of blanketing whole fields. The pitch to growers of high-value specialty crops like carrots, lettuce and onions: cut chemical inputs by more than 96%, reduce hand-weeding costs, and collect plant-level data along the way. Founded in 2018 and led by roboticist Gabe Sibley, the company raised a $46.5M Series A in 2022 and commercially launched the SharpShooter in 2024.
Applied Carbon (formerly Climate Robotics) builds tractor-pulled machines that turn crop residue into biochar in a single pass across the field. The Houston-based startup converts post-harvest plant waste into a stable form of carbon that improves soil health and locks CO2 underground for centuries, selling carbon removal credits to buyers including Microsoft.