Smart greenhouse company AppHarvest announced this week that it has acquired Root AI, an agricultural robot company. The value of this transaction is approximately US$60 million, of which US$10 million is cash and the rest comes from AppHarvest stock. Root AI is a Boston-based robotics startup whose mission is quite consistent with the mission of its future parent company.
Including in August of last year, Root AI announced that it had received $7.2 million in seed round financing. Robotics have been improved during the pandemic, but agriculture and food production have received special attention as organizations are looking for ways to automate processes.
Including the aforementioned seed round of financing, Root AI has raised a total of US$9.5 million so far, driven by its interest in its Virgo harvesting system. If the acquisition passes, founder and CEO Josh Lessing will serve as CTO at AppHarvest. The start-up company currently has 19 full-time employees.
According to the statement of the two parties, the crop yield data collected by the robot is a key part of the acquisition.
"The farming model as we know it has been broken because more and more variables, such as extreme weather, drought, fire, and animal pollution, make our food system unreliable," AppHarvest founder and CEO Jonathan Webb said in a press release related to news. Greenhouse agriculture solves many of these challenges, and the collected data can exponentially provide more insights and help us predict and control crop quality and yield. "
