2025 AUTOMATION SPENDING ANALYSIS By Walt Duflock, Senior Vice President, Innovation Automation is now a late-stage capital sink that is gaining share of agrifoodtech spending as virtually every other category implodes. Here are some of the key findings as I dug through the 2025 data to see what’s likely coming in 2026 for automation based on AgFunderNews data from the last 10 years.
Total agrifoodtech funding ($M)
Automation funding ($M)
Automation % of total
Automation YoY %
Automation $ YoY change (SM)
Total YoY %
Year
2015
$10,900
$383
3.50%
2016
$8,700
$109
1.30%
-20.20%
-71.50%
-$274
2017
$12,300
$209
1.70%
41.40%
91.70%
$100
2018
$21,300
$368
1.70%
73.20%
76.10%
$159
2019
$22,100
$179
0.80%
3.80%
-51.40%
-$189
2020
$27,800
$380
1.40%
25.80%
112.30%
$201
2021
$51,700
$700
1.40%
86%
84.20%
$320
2022
$30,500
$714
2.30%
-41%
2.00%
$14
2023
$15,600
$760
4.90%
-48.9
6.40%
$46
2024
$1,600
$774
4.80%
2.60%
1.80%
$14
1. There are some structural insights and some definite phases in the automation segment. The table in this article has all the data, and here are some of the key areas. First, look at 2015 where automation reached a high-water mark of 8.3 percent of total agrifoodtech ($38 million of $4.6 billion), in part because much of the agtech investment that year was focused on robotics and drones. Second, look at 2018-2021 when capital flooded the downstream segments (marketplaces, fintech, foodtech) and crowded out automation in a big way. Automation funding as a percentage of total agrifoodtech funding was 0.9 percent, 1.5 percent and 1.8 percent for 2019, 2020 and 2021,
respectively. Since then, it has grown as a percentage of agrifoodtech investment to 2.4 percent (2022), 4.9 percent (2023) and 5.3 percent (2024), even as the overall number dropped from $95 million in 2021 to $71 million in 2022, $76 million in 2023 and $85 million in 2024. With an absolute decrease of $10 million, the percentage almost tripled from 1.8 percent to 5.3 percent. How did this happen? Well, this is what happens when overhyped categories like controlled environment agriculture (CEA)—largely vertical farming—and alt-protein (beef alternatives) get 42 percent of agrifoodtech funding in 2021 and burn through that money with no returns at all. So
14 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com January – March 2026
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