4AG Robotics has raised $40 million to advance global mushroom harvesting through fully autonomous robots.
They announced on Tuesday, July 29, the company is planning to expand, with the robotics company working in Canada, Ireland and Australia, and new robots soon to be operating in the United States and the Netherlands this year.
The robots at 4AG pick, trim and pack mushrooms automatically all day, every day, with very specific techniques to get the most out of mushroom harvesting.
Sean O’Connor, CEO of 4AG Robotics, said there is going to be quite the impact for this sum of money. On a local scale, this means more jobs for people.
“We are going to hire more people, and we’ve just got wonderful people in Salmon Arm that we’ve been able to find and really enjoy working with.”
According to 4AG Robotics, they will also use this money to expand its manufacturing footprint in Salmon Arm, grow its field service and customer success teams and accelerate development of next-gen features like punnet packing, disease detection and AI-driven yield optimization.
“We’re the only company in the world that has replaced human labour in the mushroom industry specifically,” O’Connor added.
This financial support is led by Astanor Ventures and Cibus Capital with support from new investor Voyager Capital and existing investors InBC, Emmertech, BDC Industrial Innovation Fund and Jim Richardson Family Office and Stray Dog Capital.
The robotics company put emphasis on the fast-growing, global mushroom sector that continues to face labour shortages and margin pressure. In western markets, harvesting accounts for up to 50 per cent of production costs.
Mushrooms double in size every 24 hours with farms needing to harvest every day.
“We’re able to solve this access to labour issues, while also reducing the environmental intensity of agriculture,” O’Connor said.
He concluded that he’s excited to use this money to find eager people who want to join, build and scale 4AG Robotics in Salmon Arm.
