For nearly three years, Boulder’s Scythe Robotics stayed in stealth developing autonomous technology for the landscaping industry.
Founded in 2018 by Jack Morrison, Isaac Roberts and Davis Foster, Scythe has quietly been building a fully autonomous, electric lawnmower for commercial projects.
The team has iterated four different mowers and is now emerging from stealth with the momentum of a $13.8 million Series A funding round.
This isn’t the team’s first foray into this technology though, as Morrison and Roberts led 3D-scanning startup Replica Labs until it was acquired by Boulder-based Occipital in 2016.
As the duo worked at Occipital following the acquisition, Morrison said he spent his time thinking about bigger, better applications for computer vision and 3D-positioning technology.
“Things clicked when I was mowing my lawn,” he said.
So, Morrison pitched Roberts and Foster to join him on a new startup that integrated sensing technology into a lawnmower. His ambition was clear, he wanted to redesign a mower with the technology built into it, instead of retrofitting an existing mower with computer vision.
And, after three years in stealth and four different machines, Scythe made its public debut this week and shared its ambitious goals.
The company has developed a 4-foot-long mower with a 52-inch mowing deck and a battery that lasts for eight hours of mowing time. With those specifications, the machine can autonomously mow two acres per hour. The machine features eight cameras and a suite of sensors that enable it to identify and respond to the presence of humans, animals and other obstacles.
Scythe has been testing the mower in Colorado, Texas and Florida over the past three years, working most often with commercial landscapers. Morrison said Scythe’s technology is aimed at nonresidential mowing, namely used at entire housing developments, apartment complexes, campuses, schools and parks.
The company has also implemented a unique payment model that it says aligns its success with its customers. Instead of buying machines outright, customers are billed by acres mowed.
Morrison said that model eliminates the “spurty” nature of machine sales and removes the barrier of big capital expenditure for its customers.
“When our customers are able to get more work done because our machines get better, we make more money,” he said.
The idea of an autonomous lawnmower is not unique to Scythe, as another Colorado company, Left Hand Robotics, has also developed a similar product. The Longmont-based company, which started by developing autonomous snowblowers, was acquired by The Toro Co. in March.
Where Morrison said Scythe differs from its competitors is the intentionality of the products it's developing.
“This is a mower that is designed for mowing, it’s not designed to do other things OK as well,” he said.
With that in mind, the company will eventually look to diversify its portfolio in the landscaping space. Morrison said Scythe began with mowing because of the time and effort it requires for a typically manual task. Ultimately, he sees Scythe developing solutions for other outdoor maintenance needs, like leaf pick-up, seeding and even crop management.
“I look at this autonomy platform as just the beginning of all the different tasks and applications we can take on for caring for our outdoor world,” he said.
The $13.8 million Series A round brings the company’s total funding to $18.6 million and is primarily earmarked to grow Scythe’s headcount. The round was led by Inspired Capital with participation from existing investors True Ventures, Zigg Capital and Lemnos.
Currently, the company has 30 full-time employees and Morrison expects that number to grow to 40 by the year's end.
In addition, this capital and launch from stealth positions the company to begin fulfilling general availability orders by the end of 2022. As they iterate on the product, Morrison said the primary areas for growth are more power and more battery on the mower.
