Upside Robotics is reducing fertilizer use and waste in corn crops

The founders of Upside Robotics met successful 2023 due to the fact that they were some looking to physique an impact-driven institution that touched clime and agriculture. Less than a twelvemonth later, they were sleeping successful a camper connected the broadside of a Canadian maize tract gathering their robotics startup.

Waterloo, Ontario-based Upside Robotics builds lightweight solar-powered autonomous robots that present right-sized amounts of fertilizer and nutrients to crops erstwhile they request it. The company’s bundle runs connected proprietary algorithms to decipher erstwhile and however overmuch fertilizer the plants request utilizing upwind and ungraded data.

Upside’s robots presently enactment connected maize plants — 1 of the astir fertilizer-intensive crops — which was chosen by Upside for that nonstop reason, Jana Tian, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.

After Tian and Sam Dugan, co-founder and main exertion officer, met astatine the Entrepreneur First accelerator, they decided to absorption connected reducing fertilizer discarded utilizing robots due to the fact that it acceptable squarely into the halfway of the venn diagram of their interests. It besides leaned good toward their backgrounds.

Dugan had been gathering robots since helium was 10 years aged and Tian had years of acquisition arsenic a chemic technologist successful the nutrient part astatine Unilever.

Customer find with farmers further confirmed this was an country farmers were consenting to wage for a amended way.

“Traditionally, the mode the fertilizer has been applied, lone 30% of the full fertilizer gets taken by the crop, truthful a bulk of it gets wasted,” Tian said. “Farmers usually bash 1 exertion per season, truthful they person to beforehand load a batch of the fertilizer. But the crops request the fertilizer during the play arsenic well. We knew determination was that occupation that a batch of our growers truly wanted antithetic solutions to.”

Dugan (left) and Tian (right).
Courtesy of Upside Robotics

The brace formally founded Upside Robotics successful 2024 and past deed the fields — literally.

“We really bought a camper trailer, and we moved astir tract to field,” Dugan said. “We stayed connected the broadside of the tract each night, and we would beryllium walking, sometimes astir the clock. We person spent each hr of the time successful a maize tract astatine immoderate constituent successful time.”

Dugan built a robot successful 2 weeks truthful they could commencement to trial their idea. This instrumentality was a remote-controlled car that Dugan and Tian would run manually. They’d travel the robot astir the fields to cod information and show however the fertilizing strategy would enactment to farmers.

“We did our manual applications successful twelvemonth one, and that allowed america to iterate ace fast, not conscionable benignant of connected the hardware side, but learning by being with the farmers,” Tian said. “Some of our farmers said that we spent astir apt much clip than they did successful a beingness successful their fields. That allowed america to wrapper up quickly. Neither of america were farmers, truthful that gave america firsthand acquisition into what it is similar to fundamentally beryllium a farmer.”

After spending the 2024 play proving the company’s concept, they spent that disconnected play processing the 4th procreation of their robot for the 2025 increasing season. They went from 70 acres successful 2024 to 1,200 acres successful 2025.

Now, the institution is gearing up to service much than 3,000 acres successful the upcoming 2026 play with 100% lawsuit retention since the beginning. Upside reported that it has frankincense acold helped its customers chopped fertilizer usage by 70% which equates to astir $150 successful savings per acre per season.

Upside precocious raised a $7.5 cardinal effect circular led by Plural with information from Garage Capital and the founders of Clearpath Robotics.

The backing volition beryllium utilized to proceed to money probe and improvement and to support up with request — determination are much than 200 farms connected their waitlist. The institution besides hopes to grow retired of Canada with a people of breaking into the U.S. maize belt.

“People ever question if farmers are going to follow caller solutions, and they surely are, and that’s thing that we’ve learned firsthand, arsenic agelong arsenic you tin supply them with a wide [return connected investment] and a wide crushed of wherefore this exertion was built,” Tian said. “In our case, it wasn’t thing that we really had to merchantability to farmers. In a batch of cases, our farmers really asked for this solution.”