Oishii acquires Tortuga AgTech’s IP, assets, and engineering team to ‘supercharge’ its vertical farms

Vertical farming firm Oishii, finest identified for its premium strawberries and tomatoes, has acquired the “key IP and belongings” of harvest robotics startup Tortuga AgTech. Monetary phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Colorado-based Tortuga AgTech is finest identified for its robots that harvest strawberries, desk grapes, and berries, along with amassing information from vegetation and performing a couple of different duties reminiscent of trimming and treating vegetation with UV-C mild.

“We’ve had our eye on Tortuga AgTech’s development through the years and watched as they efficiently deployed $50 million in capital over eight years to develop {industry} main expertise,” Oishii cofounder and COO Brendan Somerville informed AgFunderNews.

Robots can ‘surpass human farmers within the choosing of strawberries’

Tortuga AgTech’s business harvesting fleet is at present 150 robots robust and was initially constructed for strawberry choosing.

Oishii will purchase Tortuga AgTech’s superior robotics applied sciences together with its AI fashions, frontier robotics software program and customized {hardware}. These applied sciences will likely be built-in into Oishii’s robotic system, which it has developed in partnership with Yaskawa Robotics.

Oishii claims that these additions will allow the robots to “surpass human farmers within the choosing” of strawberries and cut back harvest bills by 50%.

That’s no small declare, contemplating the truth that harvest is extensively seen as essentially the most troublesome job on the farm to automate and/or roboticize, largely due to engineering challenges.

Along with Tortuga AgTech’s IP and belongings, its crew was  a serious draw for Oishii, mentioned Somerville.

“Particularly, Oishii has welcomed key members of Tortuga AgTech’s world-leading engineering crew to affix forces with our personal,” he mentioned. “These people convey invaluable experience that can contribute considerably to our ongoing innovation and improvement efforts.”

The vast majority of Tortuga’s crew has been instantly built-in, and the groups are already actively working collectively, he added.

Oishii is one in every of only a handful of vertical farming corporations which are at present thriving at a time when many extra have both declared chapter or closed up store utterly. The corporate, which raised $134 million in 2024, has been slowly however steadily increasing availability of its strawberries from the Northeast US to different components of the nation together with D.C., Chicago, Virginia, Texas, and Wisconsin.

For the Tortuga AgTech crew and tech, the deal presents “a promising future,” Tortuga’s Adamson informed AgFunderNews.

“Oishii’s robust imaginative and prescient, {industry} management, and nice success in fundraising from many kinds of buyers offers Tortuga’s expertise and imaginative and prescient the most effective probability of industry-changing success, whereas straight impacting Oishii’s backside line.”

Adamson mentioned the corporate will in the interim concentrate on integrating its applied sciences into Oishii’s current manufacturing amenities and technical roadmap. He hinted at future improvements for harvesting robots however famous that the crew is “not able to share plans but.”

“Together with a pointy sense of the financial and business necessities for achievement, acceleration is vital her,” he added. “Tortuga supercharges the robust engineering basis Oishii has already constructed and we’re enthusiastic about seeing the growth of our robotics experience as a crew.”

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