FEATURE STORY THE PATH TO $5 BILLION IN AUTOMATION REVENUE By Walt Duflock, Senior Vice President, Innovation
The most important number in specialty crop agtech is $5 billion in automation revenue in a single year. I’ve written before about the importance of automation becoming a category with more than $1 billion in annual sales. That metric is significant from a segment perspective because, across many technology categories, there is precedent for that level of revenue generating meaningful follow-on segments. In automation, the opportunities include: (1) systems integration, which helps agricultural operators incorporate robots into their farming operations; (2) data and analytics, which take data from multiple robots and turn it into a recommendation engine for agronomic decision-making on future rotations; and (3) the manufacturing and service ecosystem, where at a certain scale it becomes worthwhile for manufacturers to build equipment close to their customers, regardless of where headquarters are located. In enterprise data centers, as various forms of storage reached $1 billion in revenue, the supporting infrastructure around systems integration and data and analytics tools often grew to 25 percent to 50 percent of the size of the underlying category. I then started analyzing what automation revenue projections could look like over the next five to 10 years and beyond. As I examined the amount of venture capital already invested, the amount and trajectory of current revenue from known players in the sector, and likely trends in venture capital and revenue growth, two things became apparent. First, based only on known players and expected growth trajectories, agtech automation is poised to grow from
approximately $310 million to $325 million in 2025 to $1 billion by 2030. That represents a 26 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Growth during the past several years has been at least 25 percent to 30 percent, with some years showing larger spikes. Second, if you look at expected agrifoodtech venture capital funding over the next five years and the anticipated percentage allocated to automation, a path to $2.5 billion within the next decade appears not only possible but increasingly probable. How does the $1 billion materialize? Over the past 10 years, automation has attracted between $2.8 billion and $3.2 billion in investment, generating the momentum needed to reach $1 billion in revenue by 2030. Much of that growth will come from non-harvest automation, including weeding robots from Carbon Robotics (Laserweeders) and Stout (mechanical weeders); spraying robots from GUSS, Ecorobotix and Verdant; thinning robots from Niqo (it is also worth noting that some weeding robots can eventually perform thinning tasks, and vice versa); harvest-assist platforms such as Burro; and autonomous mobility platforms, such as Bonsai/Farm- ng and Agtonomy. These companies can drive most of the growth needed to reach $1 billion without new market entrants. Any new entrants—and some are expected—would accelerate the growth rate and bring the $1 billion milestone into reach sooner. That creates a clear path for automation to achieve $1 billion category status within five years.
21 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com July – September 2026
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