Orchard Robotics, the agtech startup founded by Cornell dropout and Thiel fellow Charlie Wu, just closed a $22 million Series A round led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital, with participation from General Catalyst, Contrary, and other investors. The company is addressing a challenging issue in agriculture: the scarcity of precise, real-time data to inform critical farming decisions.
Despite advances in tech, even the largest farms primarily rely on manual sampling, sometimes less than 0.01% of a crop, to estimate yields and plan labour, crop inputs, and sales. This leaves farmers navigating blind spots in an increasingly challenging economic environment marked by rising costs and labour shortages.
Wu’s agricultural awakening occurred during his studies in computer science at Cornell University, where conversations with world-class fruit experts revealed a startling reality. “Through talking to them, I realised even the largest farms in the nation basically have no idea what is actually growing out in their fields,” Wu said. His grandparents’ apple farms in China provided additional inspiration for tackling agriculture’s data problem.
Orchard Robotics’ solution is a vision system that mounts cameras on tractors and farm vehicles, capturing millions of high-res images as they move through orchards or vineyards. The images feed into Orchard’s AI-powered platform, called FruitScope OS, which analyses fruit size, colour, and health at the individual plant level, providing growers with comprehensive, actionable insights. The system is already deployed on major apple and grape farms across the U.S. and is expanding rapidly into blueberries, cherries, almonds, and other speciality crops.
The startup is positioning itself a step ahead of competitors like Bloomfield Robotics (acquired by Kubota) and early-stage peers such as Vivid Robotics by aiming to deliver not just data, but a farm operating system that encompasses all workflows.
Wu envisions a future where the AI system evolves from a data-collector to an autonomous decision-maker that can optimise the entire growing operation, mirroring the expansion trajectory of Flock Safety, which grew from license plate recognition to a $7.5 billion public safety platform.
“Our ambition is to be a lot more than just collecting data. We want to collect the data, then build an operating system on top of the data, and then eventually own all the workflows in the farm,” Wu explained.
The $22 million raise will fuel growth as Orchard Robotics doubles down on product development and expands its footprint, including opening a new San Francisco office. The funding brings the company’s total raised to over $25 million, following a $3.8 million seed round earlier this year. The company plans to double its team by year-end to support its rapid expansion across speciality crop markets.
