Agricultural automation startup 4AG Robotics has secured $29 million (USD) in Series B funding for deployment of its autonomous mushroom harvesting robots.
The Canada-based company is pushing to modernize one of the few remaining hand-picked crops by offering a full-stack robotic system capable of working around the clock.
“Harvesting mushrooms is one of the most physically demanding, labour-intensive, and cost-volatile jobs in agriculture,” the company said in a blog post Tuessday. “While other crops mechanized decades ago, mushrooms remained dependent on human pickers — until now.”
Mushroom harvesting, long resistant to mechanization due to the delicacy and variability of the crop, has traditionally relied on manual labor. 4AG Robotics aims to change that with a robotic solution that retrofits into standard Dutch mushroom racks and replicates the performance of top human pickers, the company indicated.
According to 4AG, their robots perform the entire harvesting process—picking, trimming, and packing—autonomously. The units operate continuously and are managed through a software platform that allows for real-time monitoring and updates. This approach contrasts with partial automation or data-only platforms, which assist rather than replace human workers.
The Series B round was led by Astanor Ventures and Cibus Capital, with additional backing from Voyager Capital, InBC, Emmertech, BDC Industrial Innovation Fund, Stray Dog Capital, and the Jim Richardson Family Office. The funding positions 4AG to expand operations into new markets and scale production capacity.
The company is already operational in Canada, Ireland, and Australia, with systems being introduced in the Netherlands and the United States later this year, and indicated they are focusing on drop-in compatibility with existing infrastructure to reduce adoption barriers for commercial growers.
