Carbon Robotics, the Seattle company best known for weeding crops with lasers, has laid off an undisclosed number of employees, saying it had to realign costs because of broader economic conditions.
Vice-president of marketing Brett Goodwin confirmed the cuts in a statement to AgFunderNews and other outlets, after GeekWire first reported them. "Employees impacted were distributed across the US and internationally and across a variety of positions," the statement said. It put the company's workforce at 275 people worldwide. Goodwin did not say how many jobs went or answer follow-up questions; a recruitment post in March had described a team of over 300.
The cuts come two months after founder Paul Mikesell set out ambitious plans to AgFunderNews at the Ruggedize ag robotics conference at Reservoir Farms in Salinas. He spoke of a market for thousands of laser weeders a year and potentially 30,000 to 40,000 tractors a year for the company's autonomy technology. The firm passed $100 million in revenue in the year to March 2026, is developing a machine it has not yet announced, and aims eventually to list on a stock market, Mikesell said.
He said Carbon Robotics sells in about 20 countries, with the most traction in the United States, then Western Europe and Australia, and that laser weeders work wherever large areas of vegetables are grown. According to Mikesell, customers gain from lower labour and input costs, higher yields and the chance to move from transplants to direct seeding, with payback in one to three years.
On the machines' high price, he said banks had started offering operating leases for LaserWeeders, so a grower pays a monthly amount instead of putting up capital, and is cash positive as long as the machine earns more than the payment.
Photo: K A / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Source: AgFunderNews
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