Automation Is A Bright Spot Amid Ho-Hum Agtech Funding

Mushroom harvesting does not rank high on the list of desirable career choices. Rather, it’s the kind of job that robots can take over with little to no pushback.

It’s also the kind of space where automation-focused investors see some opportunity. This was evidenced last week by a $29 million Series B for 4AG Robotics, a British Columbia-based startup making robots that can autonomously pick, trim and pack mushrooms all day and night.

Mushrooms, of course, aren’t the only agricultural sector where the combination of high consumer demand, labor scarcity and increasingly sophisticated automation options are creating a compelling proposition for investors. In areas from lettuce harvesting to beekeeping, ag automation-related startups have raised billions to date.

While many earlier investments haven’t panned out, particularly around indoor farming, there’s still quite a bit of recent dealmaking tied to agricultural automation. To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to curate a list of 15 such companies that have raised rounds in the past year.

Largest funding rounds

Many of those are big rounds too.

Among them, the largest recent investment recipient hails from the leafy greens space. Ohio-based 80 Acres Farms, a developer of AI- and robotic-enabled indoor farms, raised $115 million in a February venture round backed by General Atlantic and other investors. The 10-year-old startup, which has raised $390 million to date, also announced the acquisition of Plantae Biosciences, an Israeli plant breeding technology startup.

Carbon Robotics, a Seattle-based maker of AI-powered robotics technology for weed control and automating tractors, was another funding favorite, landing $70 million in an October Series D led by Bond.

And Beewise, an Israeli startup that provides “pollination as a service” to growers, picked up $50 million in a June Series D. The company makes portable “bee homes” equipped with cameras, a robotic arm, sensors and other tech that allows it to carry out tasks normally performed by a beekeeper.

AI, automation and robotics are hot spaces

It helps that AI, automation and robotics are hot spaces for venture investment lately. Per Crunchbase data, artificial intelligence-related companies raked in a staggering 45% of all global venture investment in the second quarter. Robotics-related funding is also on the rise.

In tandem, over the past few quarters we’ve seen a plethora of jumbo-sized rounds for companies applying AI and robotics to do jobs traditionally done by humans in areas like housecleaning, construction and manufacturing. Agriculture, a sector that’s been incredibly efficient for over a century in getting machines to do humans’ work, clearly isn’t finished with this process either.

Agtech, by comparison, is not so hot

While robotics and AI may be sought-after sectors for startup investors, agtech has been weaker in the past couple years.

Per Crunchbase data, startups in agriculture and agtech categories have pulled in about $2.4 billion so far in 2025 — roughly flat with year-ago levels. Funding is still nowhere close to the 2021 peak, as charted below.

Recent quarterly funding has been more up-and-down.

Long term more predictable than short

When it comes to agtech — and many other sectors for that matter — it’s often said that it’s easier to predict trends over a long time horizon than a short one.

Long term, it seems overwhelmingly likely that we’ll see machines take over more and more of the tasks still left for humans. Mushroom-picking jobs, even if you wanted one, could be hard to come by.

In the shorter term, however, it’s notoriously difficult to project just how much time it will take for a technology to scale. Smartphones were ubiquitous just a few years after launch. Autonomous vehicles, meanwhile, have been overpromising and under-delivering for decades.

And as for agtech, much may depend on investors’ tolerance for risk as companies with compelling technologies vie to establish the pricing levels and market demand that enable them to grow into something big.