Weeding and Pest Removal Robots, No Pesticides

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Today’s Highlights:

• 🤖Ex-Tesla Engineer Rich Wurden and Weblife.io Co-Founder Kenny Lee Builds Robots for Weeding and Pest Removal🌾

• 💰Funding News: Madrona Venture Labs Raises $11 Million👩‍💻

Robots Now Working as Farmers, Courtesy of Ex-Tesla Engineer Rich Wurden and Weblife.io Co-Founder Kenny Lee

The agriculture industry has been essential for human survival throughout history and crucial to economic growth. One of the biggest problems that come with this unceasing industry is the need for crop inputs, such as pesticides or herbicides, which often emit GHG emissions* and affect humans and the environment in a negative manner.

Now what if we could keep this industry going, preventing the disasters human beings could go through without it while helping save the planet? This is what has come into the minds of Aigen founders Rich Wurden (CTO) and Kenny Lee (CEO) as they produce The Aigen Element.

*GHG Emissions: Greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and ozone strengthening the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change

The Aigen Element

The Aigen Element are robots designed to end the overuse of pesticides when removing weeds and pests in farms. These robots operate by closing in on the ground at about two miles per hour and flicking weeds from areas in which seeds would be grown and spread.

By excluding pesticides and introducing robots into the farming process, Wurden and Lee aim to not only remove GHGs, negatively affecting the planet a little less, from the equation but also to assist farmers during labor shortages in agriculture.

Putting growers' and farmers’ heavy use of chemicals to an end has also become of personal importance to Wurden and Lee, coming from families who have personally been affected by exposure to pesticides, along with some of the employees in their 15-person team.

It’s Personal

Wurden and Lee hadn’t always dedicated themselves to agricultural technology. Before working on Aigen, Wurden was a mechanical engineer and battery tech worker at Tesla. He then joined a startup called Pure Watercraft in Seattle, working on electric boating.

Lee, on the other hand, started his career as an entrepreneur in the cybersecurity industry, co-founding Weblife.io, a startup focused on making the internet a safer place for users. Lee sold Weblife.io to Proofpoint for $60 million in 2017.

Being survivors of pesticide-associated illnesses, Wurden with type 1 diabetes and Lee with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, pivoting their careers towards pesticide removal and combating the climate crisis became their main goal.

Wurden and Lee met on a Slack channel called Work on Climate, which led them to work together and achieve exactly that.

Off-The-Grid Assistance

Wurden and Lee designed the Aigen Element to work continuously for 12 to 14 hours non-stop, equipped with lithium iron phosphate battery packs so they wouldn’t need to be plugged in during use. Running on solar and wind power, these robots are completely off the power grid, allowing further uninterrupted use.

The Aigen Element robots are also able to run in the dark for four hours, six in light to moderate rain, and extreme heat, assisting farmers in conditions that would be considered hostile for them to stay out in the field.

Saving The Planet with Robots

With the support of a few investors, including NEA, Global Founders, Regen Ventures, Bessemer, Climate Tech VC, Cleveland Ave, and a climate fund run by ex-Meta executive Mike Schroepfer, Aigen has raised about $7 million in early-stage funding. Aigen has also received additional grant money from the state of Idaho.

With their collected funding, Wurden and Lee will be building more robots and developing additional capabilities, in hopes to not replace farmers but provide supplemental support and assistance.

With Fortune Business Insights predicting a market of over $80 billion for crop protection products by 2028, robots replacing harmful products such as pesticides and herbicides can come a long way in helping save the planet from the climate crisis.

Funding News

Madrona Venture Labs Raises $11 Million

Seattle-based Madrona Venture Labs has raised $11 million for its fifth fund. Acting as an accelerator for 32 startup companies with a total of $40 million since 2014, MVL plans to invest in 12 more startups with the $11 mill they have raised.

The 12-person studio not only accelerates established teams but also assembles them while incubating ideas. Although MVL works with founders and teams from various sectors, 84% of the companies it backs have worked on big data and developed intelligent applications. Although still circling this industry, MVL plans to focus more on startups utilizing generative AI and NLPs for task and data automation.

MVL has already launched some generative AI companies, such as Storia and Finpilot. The former generates storyboards from natural language whilst the latter provides responses from analyzing financial documents.

The studio has stated that it will also center its attention on climate tech, beginning its journey by hiring Kelci Zile, former AWS sustainability global leader and advisor for Muir AI, as a venture partner.

Learn more about Madrona Venture Labs here! 

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