Orchard Robotics, founded by a Thiel fellow Cornell dropout, raises $22M for farm vision AI 

Orchard Robotics, founded by Charlie Wu—a Cornell computer science dropout and Thiel fellow inspired by his grandparents’ apple farming background—has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital. The startup develops AI-powered vision technology to help fruit growers more accurately monitor crop health and yield. Using small cameras mounted on tractors, Orchard Robotics captures ultra-high-resolution images of fruit, which are analyzed by AI to assess size, color, and health. This data is then uploaded to a cloud-based platform that assists farmers in making informed decisions about fertilization, pruning, labor needs, and marketing. Despite the concept of computer vision for specialty crops not being new, most large U.S. farms still rely on manual sampling, which provides imprecise estimates of crop conditions. Orchard Robotics aims to address this gap by offering more precise, scalable data collection and analysis. The company’s technology is already deployed on major apple and grape farms and is expanding to other crops such as blueberries