Augean Robotics Hailed as “Comeback Kids” during AgSharks Competition
By Stephanie Metzinger A ugean Robotics is a true testament to the phrase “persistence pays off.” The robotics start-up company—which builds a fully autonomous, vision-based farming robot called “Burro”—returned to the AgSharks® Competition stage this past October for a second shot at winning $250,000 in seed funding. The early-stage company first competed in AgSharks in 2017 during the Western Growers Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. After fiercely pitching Burro to a panel of investors from S2G Ventures and specialty crop farmers, Augean Robotics was not selected as a winner and subsequently did not earn the investment capital at stake. The startup, which is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, with another office in Salinas, CA, at the Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology, used the experience as a learning opportunity. Implementing the feedback they received from the AgSharks judges and other stakeholders, the principals refined their product to better fit the needs of
agricultural industry. They came back this year, looking to change the outcome. “We’ve been very persistent,” said Charlie Andersen, CEO of Augean Robotics. “We pitched last year and didn’t win. Since then, we’ve assembled the world's best team, found initial customers and have been through a whirlwind of progress. We believe that we are the best play in the world in which to deploy capital into agtech robotics, and I’m glad that we won the judges over this year.” Augean Robotics walked away from the 2018 competition with a $250,000 equity investment offer, as well as access to farm acreage for pilot testing, to take its collaborative robotic platform from development to market. The seed funding was awarded by S2G Ventures (Seed 2 Growth) after competing against four other start-up companies also inventing new technology solutions to solve agriculture’s most pressing issues. Burro can follow workers; autonomously move cargo by acting as a
virtual conveyor belt from where people are working to where the crops are being collected; and captures the data needed to further automate farm work. According to Andersen, farmworkers often spend 20 to 30 percent of their day running produce back and forth to a collection point. Burro eliminates that. “Our launch product, Burro, automates repetitive in-field transit, and is the first step towards completely autonomous farming in the most labor-intensive, highest-margin crops,” said Andersen. “We are giving growers a platform that can be expanded to do more tasks autonomously and will enable farmers to make improvements in operational efficiencies.” In addition to winning the favor of the judges, the robotics startup also won over the audience. Annual Meeting attendees who watched the pitch session had the opportunity to rank each of the five competing companies’ technology as: buy, try or deny. Augean Robotics received the highest percentage of “buys,” which played a role S2G Ventures’ decision to invest.
16 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2019
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