Orchard Robotics, a New York-based agtech startup founded by Charlie Wu, a Cornell dropout and Thiel Fellow, has raised $22 million in Series A funding to help fruit growers manage crops with tractor-mounted vision AI cameras.
The round was led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital, with participation from returning investors General Catalyst and Contrary.
Inspired by his grandparents’ apple farm in China, Wu launched Orchard Robotics in 2022 to address a key challenge: most large-scale farms still rely on manual crop sampling, leaving critical decisions about yields, chemicals, and labor based on incomplete data.
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How it works
Orchard’s high-resolution cameras attach to tractors or farm vehicles, capturing images of fruit size, color, and health as operators drive through orchards and vineyards. The images are analyzed by AI-powered software, which generates actionable insights on pruning, thinning, fertilization, and harvest planning.
The system is already used by some of the largest apple and grape farms in the US, and is now expanding to crops such as blueberries, cherries, almonds, pistachios, citrus, and strawberries.
“If you don’t know what’s growing in the field, you don’t know how much chemical to apply, how many workers to hire, or what you can market,” said Wu, CEO of Orchard Robotics.
Competing in agtech’s next wave
Orchard Robotics competes with startups like Bloomfield Robotics (acquired by Kubota), Vivid Robotics, and Green Atlas, all building vision AI tools for specialty crops. Wu estimates today’s fruit and vegetable data market at $1.5B, but envisions a much larger opportunity as AI evolves from analysis to autonomous farm decision-making.
His ambition: for Orchard to become not just a data collector but the “operating system for farms,” controlling workflows across the agricultural value chain.
