I put up a post a few weeks back with my thoughts on the state of play for ag and AgTech shows, including Tulare World Ag Expo and San Francisco World Agri-Tech. I wanted to revisit Tulare for one more post, this time about a podcast I recorded with Paul Mikesell, the Founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics (you can watch the podcast here). Paul and I have had a couple of recorded sessions. I have thoroughly enjoyed them. Paul is a great founder and has done a tremendous job of leading Carbon Robotics from day zero through to their status today as the leading laser weeding robot startup, and in many ways, the leading weeding robot startup for specialty crops.

One of the things that came out of the podcast was Paul sharing that Carbon Robotics had sales of over $100 million in 2025. This is a huge milestone for any startup, even more huge in a hardware category that involves extensive R&D efforts and a solid go-to market strategy with support and economics that work for growers. A lot of my followers and friends ask why Carbon Robotics gets so much attention from me. That answer is simple – they are the alpha dog of specialty crop automation software at the moment and likely for the next several moments. They deserve an outsized amount of attention from everyone in and around the automation space because of their results.

First, the ability to actually conjure up a laser weeder and then get it built, commercialized, and scaled with multiple models over several years is a great accomplishment. Second, their ability to fundraise in an increasingly challenging environment where VC has dropped 70% in five years has helped them continue to scale (they’ve raised well over $150M, including a $70M D round). In addition, Paul’s CEO track record (including a $2.5 billion exit to EMC in 2010 and another exit from Clustrix) helped him secure capital from non-AgriFoodTech investors, including Nvidia and BOND (and Nvidia has a board seat). These kinds of investments are great because they bring investment dollars from outside AgriFoodTech into the segment. It takes a CEO with that kind of track record to attract those kinds of dollars into the space.

Third, they have built the go-to market model to multiple continents and several companies. This is a huge lift in AgTech. They have also expanded from specialty crops with the G2 200, 400, and 600 models to Midwest crops with the 1200 and 1800 with their 2025 rollout at Tulare. They have developed a laser weeder add-on for the Farm-NG Amiga that was shown at Tulare. They have also developed Carbon ATK (Autonomous Tractor Kit) to support autonomous tractors. The combined product suite adds to the total addressable market Carbon Robotics can reach.

The $100 million revenue number for 2025 is a big milestone. I appreciate Paul being willing to share that number. To other automation startups, if you are growing revenue and are comfortable sharing the number, please reach out and help us dial in the revenue estimates for the segment. At the moment, Ben Palone and I are comfortable (based on the feedback we get from actual startups who are in market and commercializing) that a good estimate for 2025 automation sales for specialty crops was $310 million. This represents 20-25% growth over 2024. That is a solid growth rate for a space with multiple startups growing revenue. It also means we are on pace to become a $1 billion category by 2030, which creates significant complementary opportunities, including systems integration and data/analytics.

So those are two big numbers from an ecosystem perspective. We have overall revenue of $310 million at a solid growth rate. We also have a $100 million player poised to continue their growth. Selfishly, I would like to see the percentage of category revenue for Carbon Robotics shrink some because right now the category is a little reliant on one large player. But I am also fine with Carbon Robotics continuing an aggressive growth trajectory because there are mid-stage startups that are starting to grow revenue that will add to the overall category growth. I’ll have more to say about them in future articles. For now, the headlines are $310M and $100M+ and both are signs of a category that is solving real problems and working hard to scale to a $1B category the next five years.