# Tyler Niday

> Tyler Niday is the co-founder and CEO of Bonsai Robotics, a San Jose-based agtech startup building AI-first autonomy software and hardware for farming. With a background in agricultural engineering from Cal Poly SLO and a systems design master's from MIT, Niday spent seven years at Blue River Technology helping develop the landmark See & Spray precision herbicide system before founding Bonsai in 2022. Under his leadership, Bonsai has raised $28.5M in total funding, deployed vision-based autonomy across 500,000+ acres, and in July 2025 acquired farm-ng to combine software expertise with modular electric robotics - positioning the company to be the world leader in autonomy software for intelligent outdoor machines in harsh environments.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Bonsai Robotics
- **Organizations:** Bonsai Robotics, Blue River Technology, John Deere, Orchard Machinery Corporation
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science, BioResource and Agricultural Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Master of Science, Engineering and Management (System Design and Management), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- **Known for:** Co-founded Bonsai Robotics in 2022, growing it to 59 employees by 2025, Raised $28.5M total funding including $15M oversubscribed Series A, Deployed VisionSteer vision-based navigation across 500,000+ acres of orchard operations in the US and Australia

## Career timeline

- **2009** — Joined Irrigation Training and Research Center as System Engineer
- **2012** — Joined Orchard Machinery Corporation as R&D Engineer, designing equipment for the tree nut industry
- **2015** — Joined Blue River Technology, working on computer-vision-guided See & Spray technology
- **2017** — Blue River Technology acquired by John Deere for $305M; Niday continues in autonomy engineering leadership
- **2022** — Co-founded Bonsai Robotics with CTO Ugur Oezdemir; raised $10.5M seed round
- **2023** — Deployed VisionSteer - vision-based autonomous navigation for GPS-denied orchard environments
- **2025-01** — Closed $15M Series A led by Bison Ventures (oversubscribed), total funding reaches $28.5M
- **2025-07** — Acquired farm-ng to combine autonomy software with modular electric robotics; expanded leadership team with OpenCV founder Gary Bradski as Chief Science Officer

## Achievements

- Co-founded Bonsai Robotics in 2022, growing it to 59 employees by 2025
- Raised $28.5M total funding including $15M oversubscribed Series A
- Deployed VisionSteer vision-based navigation across 500,000+ acres of orchard operations in the US and Australia
- Sold 50+ autonomous robots in first year of commercial deployment
- Key contributor to See & Spray technology at Blue River Technology / John Deere
- Acquired farm-ng (230+ Amiga robots sold) to create full-stack autonomous farming platform
- Built AI autonomy system that operates without GPS in challenging orchard environments
- Achieved 45% reduction in operating expenses and 60% faster job completion for customers

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — Announced deep-bench leadership expansion including Gary Bradski (OpenCV founder) as Chief Science Officer and John Teeple (former John Deere Technology Director) as COO
- **2025-07** — Bonsai Robotics acquired farm-ng, combining vision-based autonomy software with modular electric Amiga robot platform
- **2025-01** — Closed oversubscribed $15M Series A led by Bison Ventures with participation from Cibus Capital and existing investors

## Links

- Website: https://bonsairobotics.ai
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-niday-16a67650

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/tyler-niday
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-11