Latvian agritech WeedBot raised €425K

Latvian agritech WeedBot, which developed high-precision laser weeding technology Lumina, raised €425K from Latvian fund Overkill Ventures, Danish fund Accelerace, several business angels, and a UK-based vegetable seed breeding and production company.

WeedBot was founded by Jānis Jaško in Riga in 2020. The startup developed a machine, with a 6-meter working width, and separate, independent weeding modules including a laser unit, cameras, and a graphics processor (GPU) on board. Each module takes care of one ridge of the crop. A camera captures an image from the top of the ridge, whereupon a neural network-based algorithm finds all plants in the image and separates weeds from the crop seedlings. As a final step, a laser beam is applied to the weeds so the water in the leaves boils up. After the treatment, the weed’s leaves wilt. The machine connects to the rear of the tractor. For now, it can weed only carrots. The company will continue to train AI to use the machine for similar crops like lettuce, beetroot, and onions. Currently, WeedBot’s laser weeder runs up to 1,2 km per hour, which is up to five times faster than weeding by hand. 

The company will use the investment in the production of its first commercial machine. The previously developed prototypes were intended more for testing individual elements in the field. Also, WeedBot plans to raise further funding to scale up production. 

Overkill Ventures is a Latvian business angel fund that provides pre-seed and seed funding to b2b tech startups from Baltic, Nordic, Central, and Eastern-Europe regions. It has invested in 38 startups. The fund was established in Riga in 2018. Overkill's partners are David Ventzel, @PeterMarcco Peter Marculans, and Dmitry Saikovsky.

Accelerace is a Denmark-based venture company, founded by Peter Torstensen in 2008. It is a pre-seed investor and startup accelerator in the Nordic and Baltic regions. The fund plans to continue investing in Latvian startups.