The foggy west shores of the Peninsula aren't known for their startups, but they do have a rich history of agriculture. Now the two are coming together with a company that's brought a Silicon Valley mindset to the small coastal town of Pescadero.
Hippo Harvest, which uses robots and machine learning to harvest lettuce in a high-tech greenhouse, announced Thursday that it raised a $21 million Series B funding to build out its operation in unincorporated San Mateo County.
"The region has a rich history of production in greenhouses, mostly for flora culture, that was hit with hard times, and there was also a bit of a boom-and-bust cycle with cannabis production," CEO Eitan Marder-Eppstein said. "But we're taking one of those old flora culture greenhouses and breathing new life into it by retrofitting it with our robotic systems and trying to make the unit economics work for production that can solve some of the challenges we have with water use, pesticide drift and fertilizer runoff."
The company is growing lettuce that is already available at a few retailers including Gus's Community Markets, Rebyl Food and online at Amazon Fresh.
Marder-Eppstein, a former Google engineer and founder of another robotics startup, says the lettuce they produce is more sustainable, using 92% less water, 55% less fertilizer and contributing to 61% less food waste. He says the startup's lettuce also lasts about a week longer on store shelves thanks to its handling process.
"When you harvest in the field, you have a bit of a process to get it to a place where it's actually cooled and ready for distribution," he said. "But we have an advantage that we're already in an enclosed environment, so our harvest goes directly into our pack room to cool the product."
The funding round was led by Standard Investments with Congruent Ventures, Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Hawthorne Food Ventures, and Energy Impact Partners.
The company plans to use the capital to look for expansion opportunities in California and other water-challenged areas like Arizona, while also building up operations on its 3.5-acre lot in Pescadero, which houses its sole operating greenhouse.
Marder-Eppstein sees opportunities for the greenhouse designs in areas that are struggling to meet the water needs of the agriculture sector. He says another advantage to the greenhouse model is that it can be built on non-arable land.
The company was able to buy existing robots designed for the warehouse and logistics sector and fit them with custom-built attachments and machine learning software coded in house. The robots are attached with sensors that monitor various factors to determine the health of the lettuce and optimal growing conditions.
"We're continuing to work on our robotic systems and finding new applications for the robots, and we continue to surprise ourselves with building new attachments so that the robot can do some new capability," Marder-Eppstein said. "We recently put an airflow sensor on the robot, and it drives around and can determine how our fans are working so that we can get enough airflow on the plants."
Hippo Harvest currently employees 15 full-time workers and eight part-time farmhand workers at its greenhouse.
