Small Robot Company nears £1.5m funding target
Tom, one of three robots developed by the company © Small Robot Company The Small Robot Company is close to achieving an initial funding target of £1.5m in just one week.
The company, which develops farming technology using robotics and artificial intelligence, launched a crowdfunding drive on 4 May after a lead investor pulled out.
While the Small Robot Company is now out of the danger zone, it has ambitions to raise at least £3m to £4m to be able to continue to develop the business.
See also: Small Robot Company turns to crowdfunding after investor quits
More than 500 farmer investors have pledged money so far, with about 5,000 investors in total offering some level of funding.
Small Robot Company co-founder Sam Watson Jones told Farmers Weekly he was proud of the progress the company had made over the past six years.
“In the most recent months, we have developed a grass weed detection model,” said Mr Watson Jones.
“We are the first company in the world to be able to map an entire field of wheat and identify all the grass weeds in that field, and do it at field scale.”
A farm sprayer with variable rate technology can then go into a field and take those weeds out.
One of the company’s robots is now ready for manufacturing, and the business has developed a franchise model whereby a farmer will buy a robot and then sell services to other farmers in their local area to generate an income stream.
Oxfordshire grower Tom Allen-Stevens, an investor in the Small Robot Company, said the business was very much started by farmers, it was the inspiration of a farmer, and farmers’ thoughts had always been valued.
He added: “We have spent too long with ‘big ag’ dictating what we should apply to our crops and how we should grow them. We’ve got our own knowledge and it’s about time we brought that knowledge to the fore and really develop it.”