Farm Robo-FOMO
A Q&A with Burro's CEO, plus your guide to coffee robots and "Nightswimming."
Agricultural automation is having a moment.
Or is it?
Recent headlines certainly make it seem so. Autonomous farm vehicle startups Future Acres and Burro each came out with big announcements on the same day this week as Future Acres hooked up with Sun World International while Burro raised $10.9 million.
Last week saw a raft of funding announcements for ag tech companies including Iron Ox, Blue White Robotics and Advanced Farm Technologies. And of course just a couple months back, John Deere acquired Bear Flag Robotics for a cool $250 million.
While investor interest might be red hot, is farmer interest just as frothy?
During a Q&A with Burro CEO Charlie Andersen this week, I asked him if interest in farm robotics was accelerating. I was looking for an answer about farmer interest, but Andersen instead spoke about the investor side, which I found curious (could be recency bias on his part since he did just raise nearly $11M). From that interview:
OTTOMATE: Is…
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