John Deere
Colorado’s new right-to-repair law ensures tractor and wheelchair owners get the parts they need
Colorado’s governor signed a refreshingly straightforward “right-to-repair” bill into law this afternoon, requiring companies to provide resources like parts, firmware and manuals for devices that they previously kept secret and…
Here in the U.S., John Deere is, in a word, dominant. According to figures from antitrust nonprofit The American Economic Liberties Project, the corporation controls 53% of the large tractor…
John Deere at CES? Yes, with a robotics-based fertilizer system and a new electric excavator
Consumer tech is at an inflection point right now, with slowing growth in developed markets and economic depressions pulling emerging markets back when it comes to investment and usage. Into…
InnerPlant grows with new John Deere-backed millions for sustainable farming
InnerPlant helps farmers reduce the amount of chemical pesticides needed or harvests lost to pathogens.
Xeneta makes a splash with $80M on a $265M valuation to scale its crowdsourced sea and air freight analytics
The wheels of global commerce continue to turn, through wars, pandemics and economic downturns; and today a startup taking a new tech approach to improve the workings of one of…
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As the worm turns
Here’s something for you to mull over this fine Thursday morning: Do agtech robotics need a reset? Granted, we’re dealing with a small sample size here, but a string of news items over the past year have left me wondering why the category is — thus far — failing to live up to some very…
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More automatons about buildings and food
As I noted last year, we’re ramping up to return to Boston this July for our TC Sessions Robotics event. Our March 2020 event on the Berkeley campus was the last major in-person TechCrunch show before everything shut down. For what should probably be self-evident reasons, we decided that robotics is a subject best experienced…
Toyota Ventures backs seed extension into Agtonomy, turning tractors into autonomous vehicles
Using a mobile phone app, a farmer can assign a job to one of the tractors, like mowing the field.
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The year of living autonomously
Even in the era of the virtual event, it tends to take me a few days to recover from the whirlwind of CES. Frontloading the year’s big hardware news is a bit less than ideal, but perhaps the changing nature of the big tech event will bring adjustments to the news cycle, as well. For…
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Consumer Robotics Show
CES has always been a weird show for robotics. That’s not an indictment of the show itself, so much as a comment on the state of robotics generally. It’s true the organization behind the show dropped the name “Consumer Electronics Show” some number of years ago (a fact it continues to be very insistent about…
The 8R tractor has been in select customers’ hands for “a few seasons” now, according to John Deere. After all, like any kind of autonomous machinery, a self-driving tractor isn’t…
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Peer into the eyes of Cyberdog
When someone mentioned to me that Xiaomi was launching its own “robot dog,” my mind immediately went to Sony’s Aibo. And honestly, it would have been difficult to be more wrong. Now that the news has been out for a few days, the company’s heard all of your bad Black Mirror jokes, don’t worry. And,…
John Deere buys autonomous tractor startup Bear Flag Robotics
In the world of robotic startups, acquisition is often as good an outcome as any. And when it comes to robotic tractor startups, you could do worse than being acquired…
Volocopter extends Series C funding to $94M with backing from logistics giant DB Schenker and others
Autonomous air mobility company Volocopter has added to the Series C funding round it announced in September 2019. The German electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft maker announced €50…
Volocopter awarded key designation by European aviation safety regulator
Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft maker Volocotper has received a Design Organization Approval (DOA) from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). This is basically a recognition by…
Volocopter and John Deere team up for a crop-spraying autonomous agricultural drone
Autonomous drone-based transportation startup Volocopter has revealed its first partner for its new VoloDrone industrial and commercial electric vertical take-off and landing craft: John Deere. The agricultural and industrial heavy…
Africa Roundup: Paga goes global and 4 startups raise $99M in VC
Nigerian digital payments startup Paga is gearing up for international expansion with a $10 million round led by the Global Innovation Fund. The company is exploring the release of its payments product in…
John Deere partners with Kespry to bring drones and aerial data to construction and forestry
Heavy equipment makers Deere & Co., better known as John Deere, have forged a strategic alliance with drone-tech startup Kespry, the companies announced Tuesday in Las Vegas at CONEXPO, an…
