Sep 13, 2024

Tractor manufacturer Kubota buys Bloomfield Robotics AI startup

Kubota Corp. has acquired Bloomfield Robotics Inc., a startup that uses advanced imaging and artificial intelligence to monitor individual specialty crop plant health and performance.

Kubota is leading global tractor manufacturer.

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Bloomfield’s service includes advanced cameras, on-farm data processing systems, and grower dashboards providing real-time plant-level assessments. The service delivers real data that transforms customers’ ability to make accurate projections and yield estimations, guiding decision making around harvest timing and workforce deployment, according to a news release.

Bloomfield offers services to winegrape, table grape, juice grape, blueberry and raspberry growers in the U.S., Mexico, Chile, Peru and France, and plans to expand to more specialty crops and countries in the coming months, according to the release.

“We’re excited to announce the acquisition of Bloomfield Robotics, a natural evolution of our successful partnership,” M. Brett McMickell, Kubota North America’s chief technology officer, said in the release. “Combining AI-driven technology with our legacy quality products will enable Kubota to solve real issues facing agriculture. This proposed acquisition is a key milestone for Kubota’s strategic vision to provide comprehensive smart agriculture solutions.”

Bloomfield’s journey began with early research at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. Today, it delivers hardware and software solutions to customers across seven countries and three continents, according to Tim Mueller-Sim, Bloomfield’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

“Partnering with Kubota will allow us to expand our reach, bringing our innovative services to more farmers globally and empowering them with precise insights into every plant in their fields,” Mueller-Sim said in the release.

The vision for Bloomfield from founding was to provide continuous plant-level knowledge to every specialty crop farmer around the world. The acquisition brings that vision forward at a scale and speed not imagined, Mark DeSantis, Bloomfield’s CEO, said in the release.

“Our goal with Bloomfield from our first day was to enable farmers to produce more with fewer resources,” George Kantor, Bloomfield’s co-founder, said in the release. “To feed the ever-increasing global population, farmers need to increase the productivity of their crops using fewer scarce resources, and Bloomfield provides them the plant-level knowledge and data that they need to do it.”

Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Bloomfield Robotics develops AI-driven plant imaging technology for use in specialty crops. Bloomfield’s mission is to make every farm vehicle a continuous data collection platform that assesses the health and performance of every plant by providing plant-level insights to help growers make more informed management decisions.

Part of Osaka, Japan-based Kubota Corp., Kubota North America Corp. (KNA), is based in Grapevine, Texas, and is a leading global provider of agricultural machinery and technologies. Kubota manufactures and sells a range of machinery including tractors, hay tools, lawn and garden equipment, construction equipment and other implements.

Bloomfield will continue to be based in Pittsburgh.