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Image Credits:Four Growers
Robotics



YC-BACKED FOUR GROWERS BUILDS ROBOTS TO HELP SOLVE GREENHOUSE LABOR SHORTAGES

Rebecca Szkutak
7:02 AM PST · November 20, 2024



When Brandon Contino and co-founder Dan Chi were developing Four Growers’
produce-harvesting robots, they practically lived in a greenhouse for an entire
year. They coded at a small desk tucked in the back corner and discovered that
fertilizer bags can be comfortable beds.

“We actually started just running everything off a laptop, and I would be there
in the row coding. [Chi] would be making changes mechanically,” Contino, now
CEO, told TechCrunch. “We’d run it then we’d make code changes, we’d redevelop,
we’d go back in and run it again. So, it was a very fun time just living at the
farm basically.”




The result was Four Growers, which builds robots designed to autonomously
harvest plants in greenhouses. The robots are programmed to identify produce at
the right level of ripeness — which varies depending on a farmer’s needs — by
using multiple stereo cameras to see the crops and help maneuver the robot’s
arms around nonripe fruit on the vine. The tech currently works with tomatoes
and will be commercially available to harvest other crops like cucumbers in the
near future, Contino said.

Contino’s path to building agtech robotics wasn’t a fluid one. He entered
college interested in neural prosthetics. He later pivoted to water sensors and
water scarcity after realizing he didn’t want to end up with a career working on
cyborgs, he said. Water scarcity led him to farms, but after talking to farmers,
he realized robotics could help farmers in a bigger way.

“We were actually cold-calling a bunch of different greenhouse farmers. We were
really asking them about all their challenges, and we always heard that labor
was the number one pain point for them,” Contino said. “And when you talk to
outdoor farms, you hear the exact same thing.”

Having enough labor to harvest crops is crucial because if crops can’t be
harvested when they are ready, they rot and result in lost profits for the farm.
The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture’s 2024 labor report
said the industry is facing a “critical shortage” of workers, and it won’t get
better anytime soon.

Contino said they were intentional about focusing on greenhouse farms. Unlike
outdoor farms, greenhouses can grow almost all year round, be closer to their
end consumer, and are more efficient than outside farms, Contino said. They also
harvest on a much more frequent schedule than outdoor farms, which makes them a
good candidate to buy tech.



Four Growers was officially founded in 2018 and launched the current iteration
of its robots in 2023. The company now works with five customers, and its robots
have picked millions of tomatoes.

The Pittsburgh-based company just raised a $9 million Series A round led by
Basset Capital with participation from Y Combinator, Ospraie Ag Science, and
other existing investors. The company has raised a total of $15 million in
venture funding. Contino said that the funding will be used to build more
robots, as they aren’t sure they can keep up with demand.

The timing for this announcement comes just a few weeks after large, and
well-capitalized, indoor farming startup Bowery Farms had to cease operations as
a result of crop diseases and tight margins that didn’t leave much room for
error.




Contino said that he wants all companies in this sector to succeed but added
that vertical farms are particularly challenging and expensive. Contino said
they looked into vertical farming before launching Four Growers and determined
that the better market opportunity was to build tech for existing farms as
opposed to trying to launch one on their own.

There are quite a few companies looking to help make farms more efficient
through robotic harvesting, including Carbon Robotics, which has raised $143
million in venture capital. Blue River Technology and Bear Flag Robotics are
both farm robotics companies that raised venture capital before being acquired
by John Deere. Seso is an agtech startup that is tackling the industry’s labor
shortage through a different lens: making it easier for farms to bring on
migrant workers.

Contino said that the company is working to expand its technology beyond just
harvesting and is looking to expand into outdoor farms in the coming years.

“It’s not really a labor replacement. It’s more of an augmentation,” Contino
said. “As the labor force shrinks, and there’s less people willing to do it,
it’s putting them to more comfortable positions and allowing one person to be
able to do a lot more.”

Topics

AgTech, agtech startups, AI, Basset Capital, Four Growers, Pennsylvania,
Robotics, robotics startups, Startups, United States


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Rebecca Szkutak

Senior Reporter, Venture

@rebecca_szkutak
Becca is a senior writer at TechCrunch that covers venture capital trends and
startups. She previously covered the same beat for Forbes and the Venture
Capital Journal.
View Bio



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