A Raleigh startup using AI and robotics to change the world of farming is hiring as it plans a high stakes expansion in the Triangle.
AgEye CEO Nick Genty said the company, which announced its acquisition of the HYVE brand from DASCOM Americas this week, is scaling up.
The buy is just part of the plan. HYVE offers a scalable, automated vertical farming system that fits into AgEye’s vision of making indoor farming less expensive.
Some call it a niche industry, but not Genty. He prefers the term “hidden industry,” and he has a theory that indoor farming might just feed the world someday.
Investors are buying in.
Securities filings show the firm closed on $500,000 last year, but Genty said it’s kept at it over the last several months, accumulating about $2 million in that round. The deal is the outcome of some of that capital, he said. The rest will be used for global expansion.
Much of the company has been heavily focused in North America, but Genty said the problem it’s trying to solve is global.
It’s how do you feed a growing population amid a changing climate?
With most of the nation’s produce coming from California and Arizona, two states prone to major weather events such as floods, it’s a “huge risk,” he said.
“For us, it’s how do we bring that closer to the consumer?” he said. “We think indoor [farming] is the way to do that.”
Traditionally, indoor farming has been prohibitively expensive. But AgEye is trying to change the way it happens, with “really small, inexpensive robots that can be affordable for all indoor growers.”
Gentry said customers from Chicago, Nebraska and Canada are buying into the idea. Armed with the recently-raised capital, he hopes to hire more sales and marketing personnel to take it further.
“We’ve got quite a few farms coming online this year,” he said. “We’ve seen a consistent uptick in requests for new operations.”
But to fulfill the need he sees coming, the company has to get bigger. Right now the team stands at 28, about a third in Raleigh, the rest in India. The plan is to keep fundraising, add to the team and eventually build out into a bigger space in Raleigh. The firm’s current lease in North Raleigh is up in a year, and Genty said the team is already evaluating its options for expansion.
The Hyve deal, which adds intellectual property but not personnel, came out of the evolution of a strategic partnership two and a half years ago.
AgEye is the second startup for Genty and co-founder John Dominic. The pair founded an app consulting firm in 2008 and ran it until 2017. AgEye started in 2018.