David Ashton grew up outside of Sacramento, California, and attended college in San Luis Obispo during the historic drought of the late 2000s.
He spent years driving the 300 miles between Sacramento and San Luis Obispo, captivated by the endless fields of lettuce and acres of lush vegetation set against a stark, arid backdrop. The fact that these leafy crops were grown in drought conditions for shipment to other parts of the country stuck with Ashton and later became the inspiration for his robotic farming startup Canopii, which aims to reduce the supply chain of agricultural products.
Portland, Oregon-based Canopii builds robotic greenhouses that can autonomously run the entire crop growing process from seeding to harvest without human intervention. These greenhouses can produce up to 40,000 pounds of produce per year while requiring only one water spout and occupying the same space as a basketball court.
The farm was built by GK Designs and is currently designed to grow herbs and specialty vegetables such as bok choy and gai lan, Chinese broccoli.
Ashton told TechCrunch that he began planting seeds for Canopii in earnest while driving along the coast to relocate after his Portland-based agtech company filed for bankruptcy. He worked on the plan at night while his wife attended medical school.
Three years later, he applied for a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build a prototype of his vision. After that was successful, he applied for a $1 million grant to build a full-scale prototype.
“Five years later, we have reached a major milestone (for) the farm,” Mr Ashton said. “We have an autonomous farm that grows everything from seed to harvest without human intervention. And we did it with a very small team and very little capital. I think this is very different from what other industries have experienced.”
The company has raised approximately $3.6 million to date, with $2.3 million primarily from grants and the remainder from strategic funding.
Ashton knows what many investors and venture capitalists think about the indoor farming category. In this once-popular field, companies like Bowery Farming and Plenty have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, gone bankrupt, and gone on to great success.
He argues that his company’s product is fundamentally different from vertical farms, and that the company’s decision to move deliberately slowly, without venture capital, has avoided many of the same hurdles.
“The capital stack needs to diversify beyond VC,” says Ashton’s backer. “We’re five people now, and we’re still iterating on one farm, which has taught us a lot. If we wanted to get VC right away and scale up in a year or two, I don’t think it would be possible with the food infrastructure.”
The company has received inbound interest from schools, restaurants, casinos, and more. The company has reached an automation milestone and is building its first commercial farm in downtown Portland. Canopii plans to franchise these farms in the future and plans to raise venture capital when ready.
“It can be mass produced just like cars,” Ashton says. “I think the big accomplishment of this farm is that the whole thing runs on 100 amps, 240 volts. That’s home power. You can literally put this in your backyard. And that speaks to the level of resource management we’ve achieved on this farm.”
