Winner

Winner Announced: April, 2019

Investment: $1.5m

“84% of the US crop workforce tends to largely non-mechanized fruit, vegetable, and nursery production, but rising wages and a shrinking workforce are driving growers of these specialty crops to turn to robots to reduce labor needs and costs,” said Charlie Andersen, CEO and founder, Augean Robotics. “We are thrilled to have this investor support, which will allow us to accelerate the commercialization of Burro and to develop the proprietary datasets needed to enable further autonomy.”

About the Challenge

Western Growers and Radicle Growth partnered to create The Radicle Automation Challenge, a competition where AgTech automation entrepreneurs are eligible to compete for capital and exclusive access to farm acreage to pilot their technologies. This challenge was created to find and fund the best and brightest ideas from around the world to help automate agricultural functions.