Due to a lack of funding, advanced.farm, developer of an automated apple harvester that was close to commercialization, closed its doors last week and scuttled plans for a 2025 harvest season in Washington.
Founder and CEO Kyle Cobb told Good Fruit Grower that over the past year, while the company made great strides with its harvest technology, venture capitalists and farmers alike had to tighten their budgets amid uncertainty and market challenges.
“Our development is on pause because we were unable to get the funding to keep going,” he said.
By pause, Cobb clarified that he has laid off his team, but if new investments come through in the near term, they would be able to pick up where they left off.
Technology leaders with the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, which had worked closely with and funded the Davis, California-based company, called the news devastating — especially given the progress the company made last fall.
“We had the dream team on the bus, but we ran out of diesel on the way to the championship,” said Jeff Cleveringa of Columbia Fruit Packers and also a member of the research commission. “The industry needs to know we were close.”
It’s not the first time the commission has supported technology development that didn’t cross a commercial finish line — including previous harvest efforts by Abundant Robotics. But this time is more disappointing because the technology was so close to what growers need, and the collaboration between the industry and the ag tech startup was going so well, said Ines Hanrahan, executive director of the research commission.
Hanrahan, Cleveringa and Keith Veselka, CEO of NWFM and a member of the research commission, all praised advanced.farm’s collaborative approach, while Cobb insisted that Good Fruit Grower share his appreciation for the tree fruit industry.
“We could not have asked for better partners,” he said. “We feel like we’ve got unfinished business, but the question is how do we get there.”
Cobb couldn’t share a specific investment figure that would get the company up and running again, but he estimated that it needs $5 million to $10 million over the next two seasons to reach the viable commercial stage.
“You’d be surprised how much we can leverage industry funds through pre-orders or investments,” he said.
Unfortunately, the timing aligns with the downturn in the apple industry — which is driven, in no small part, by labor costs, said Veselka. Growers need automated tools to survive in the long term, but the short-term economic challenges make it difficult for technology companies to raise needed funding.
“They were staged to make some really good progress,” he said. “But the timing is against us with the collapse of the venture capital stuff, as that market dried up, and then you come into this scenario where growers can’t step up now if they wanted to.”
Check the upcoming May 1 issue of Good Fruit Grower for more on this story and what it means for growers and the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission’s technology roadmap.
—by Kate Prengaman
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