Kansas-based Greenfield Robotics, which builds autonomous robots that cut weeds mechanically instead of spraying herbicides, has opened a public share offering to raise up to $18.6 million on StartEngine, six years after its first machines began working commercial fields, Future Farming's René Groeneveld reports. Shares are priced at $2.07, and more than $428,000 had been raised at the time of publication.

The company has 82 robots working in paying customers' fields across 16 states, and its 2026 season sold out, delivering more than $1 million of robots. A drone first maps where the weeds sit relative to the crop rows; the BOTONY robot then follows that digital prescription and cuts weeds at ground level without chemicals. Next season Greenfield plans to add four more tasks to the platform, including feeding crops after dark, seeding and mulching cover crops, and planting the cash crop.

Each robot runs on two swappable lithium-ion batteries lasting three to three and a half hours and works about 0.85 acres an hour; in a University of Vermont pilot one robot covered around seven acres a day. According to Greenfield's Nathan Dyrud, a robot costs $36,500, and his rule of thumb is one machine for every 80 to 100 acres of row crops. The company has moved from pay-per-use hire to outright sales, with a lease option said to be coming.

Founder Clint Brauer, a third-generation farmer from near Wichita, has said the company grew out of his father's Parkinson's diagnosis and his search for an alternative to the herbicides his family had sprayed for decades.

Production has moved from a shed in Kansas to a line at Amity Technology in Fargo, North Dakota, which the state backs with $500,000 for a dedicated facility. Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin have bought robots for research, and USDA has run the fleet at Grand Farm in North Dakota. Proceeds will go to manufacturing, field operations and research.

Photo: PaulineCant / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: Future Farming