Aigen Robotics, headquartered in the United States, received US$12 million in Series A funding, led by Australian venture capital VC ReGen Ventures, with participation from New Enterprise Associates, Cleveland Ave, Incite and Susquehanna Private Equity Investments.
Kenny Lee founded Aigen in 2020. The Aigen team has developed a solar-powered robot platform equipped with sensors, cameras and software to monitor and automatically manage farming operations. Keeny Lee said that allowing the robots to operate can identify weeds and reduce chemical sprays that damage the soil.
The fleet of robots developed by Aigen can use GPS and artificial intelligence to navigate autonomously in the fields. It is the first farming robot to use solar and wind power as its main energy source. It uses blades at the end of the robot arm to remove weeds and deploys advanced machine learning to accurately The weed cutting action and simultaneous analysis of crops provide data for the farm to help determine crop growth and harvest time for management decisions.
In the past, farmers used chemicals to remove weeds, but they also caused diseases such as cancer and polluted the environment. Kenny Lee himself suffers from a disease and pays great attention to health and diet. He switched from the Internet security industry to developing artificial intelligence automated farming systems, hoping to change the traditional chemical farming methods, protect the environment and help farmers manage their farms more easily. .
Aigen's team employs engineers from SpaceX, Amazon Robotics and other well-known companies, working in the fields of artificial intelligence, robots, electric motors and solar energy to implement AI technology farming solutions and help farmers eliminate chemical sprays from farming operations. Organic farming is possible. The Aigen factory is expected to produce 3,000 AI automated farming robots each year.
A United Nations report shows that food production must increase by 60% by 2050 to feed the world's 9.3 billion people. Considering that the current challenges faced by the industry in terms of pests, soil ecological conservation, and weeds cannot be solved by conventional farming methods, AI technology needs to be introduced to solve the problems. Forbes estimates that the output value of AI farming systems will grow from US$1.7 billion in 2023 to US$4.7 billion in 2028. Investors can pay close attention to industry news about new automated farming innovations, such as Aigen and other similar automation companies. There will be great market potential in the future.
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