Carbon Robotics is making laser weeding a farm operations business

Carbon Robotics introduced LaserWeeder G2 in February 2025, four months after a $70 million Series D reported in October 2024. BOND led the round, with NVentures, Anthos Capital, Fuse Venture Capital, Ignition Partners, Revolution, Sozo Ventures and Voyager Capital participating. The Robot Report put total funding at $157 million and connected the round to LaserWeeder scale-up, new software and hardware products and manufacturing expansion in Eastern Washington.

Team

Paul Mikesell founded Carbon Robotics in 2018 and remains CEO. Mikesell co-founded Isilon Systems in 2001, took it public in 2006 and sold it to EMC for $2.5 billion in 2010. He co-founded distributed-database startup Clustrix in 2006, which MariaDB acquired in 2018, and later served as Uber director of infrastructure engineering in Seattle before focusing on deep learning and computer vision.

Alex Sergeev is CTO, Nick Kirsch is chief engineering officer, John Mey is vice president of advanced technology and Kevan Krysler is CFO. Carbon has U.S. and European manufacturing facilities, more than $100 million in annual revenue, growers in 15 countries and a product line now spanning LaserWeeder G2 and Carbon ATK.

Carbon is based in Seattle and has grown from a small engineering team into a global company with its own manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and Europe. NVentures, NVIDIA venture arm, participated in the Series D, while Carbon machines use camera-heavy perception, edge inference and model performance in real field conditions.

Product Line

G2 operates up to twice as fast as the previous generation, with new models starting at 4,250 lb and the 20-foot model 25 percent lighter than the original LaserWeeder. Lower weight allows lighter tractor pairing and reduces soil compaction.

The G2 600 is a 20-foot model with 30 laser modules for specialty crops. The G2 1200 and G2 1800 extend to 40-foot and 60-foot configurations for broadacre organic corn and soybean operations. Scott Rossi, vice president of northern farming operations at Tanimura & Antle, said the company had been implementing LaserWeeder G2 in its operations.

Machine Details

Carbon Robotics commercial LaserWeeder is a 20-foot liftable implement weighing 9,500 lb, with a CAT 3 three-point hitch, front PTO generator, minimum 175 hp tractor requirement and minimum 90 hp rated PTO power. Its published operating range is 0.5 to 1.5 acres per hour, more than 5,000 weeds per minute, sub-millimeter accuracy, up to 99 percent weed kill, 30 150 W diode lasers, 42 high-resolution cameras and nine high-intensity LED light bars.

Carbon has more than 100 AI deep-learning crop models, an iPad operator app, Carbon Ops Center for performance, crop and weed metrics, a mobile Carbon Companion app for real-time monitoring, one-year warranty coverage, 24/7 software and remote support and service plans after year one.

The first autonomous LaserWeeder was introduced in March 2021 for demonstrations, while the commercial LaserWeeder implement was introduced in February 2022. More than 100 growers across North America, Europe and Australia own or operate the machine. Carbon also claims the system outperforms a hand crew of 75 people and removes weeds without chemical herbicide residue.

Evidence Boundary

Carbon has disclosed funding, investors, named leadership, company revenue, country coverage, manufacturing footprint, a named grower reference, product dimensions, tractor requirements, sensor and laser counts, application rates, support terms and software tools. Public material does not yet show cost per acre by crop, uptime through full seasons, service response times, crop-yield effect, grower renewal rates, total fleet size or expansion from first deployment to repeated purchases by the same grower.

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