March 5, 2019

iUNU, a Seattle-based startup that develops computer vision and SaaS-based artificial intelligence applications for the greenhouse and indoor farming industries, announced it has secured $7.5 million in funding from BootstrapLabs, NCT Ventures, and others.

Commercial greenhouse operators are tasked with steep challenges – to balance a wide range of conditions such as temperature, humidity, crop diseases, and pests, for example, while needing to produce a large, uniformly standard crop of fresh produce for buyers who await a future harvest.

It is not uncommon, however, for commercial greenhouse production facilities to see crop losses of between 10 and 25 percent due to inconsistencies, poor visibility, inaccurate data, human error, and inefficiency related to manual data collection.

“With the greenhouse industry growing at a rate of 20 percent year-over-year, owners are scrambling to find solutions to manage and maintain their growing operations effectively,” said Adam Greenberg, CEO of iUNU. “iUNU’s solution turns growing operations into data-driven manufacturing facilities.”

Founded in 2013, iUNU’s comprehensive greenhouse management platform is able to harness computer vision to transform the way growers manage their operations. After a three year period of development and trials, the company last year released LUNA – its system that includes both mobile and fixed cameras and environmental sensors that scan a greenhouse operation from tracks, collecting data and on everything from inventory tracking and readiness alerts, to growth rates and readiness forecasting.

The data collected is analyzed and presented to clients in a easy-to-use decision support tool with actionable insights and production management capabilities on a granular level.

“I know that having a tool like Luna gives us the feasibility to have more accountability with the staff, the plants, and the environment,” said John Allen, director of strategic operations of iUNU client, Proving Grounds.

Nicolai Wadstrom, CEO and founder of BootstrapLabs, speaks to the notion that both industry and government leaders are equally interested in bringing change to the agricultural industry, which is on the cusp of a what is being called a fourth revolution, saying, “Agriculture is about to experience another industrial revolution, where Artificial Intelligence will drive game-changing efficiencies and sustainability improvements across the entire industry supply chain. With the United Nations predicting 9 billion inhabitants (worldwide) by 2050, and a need for global production to increase by 70 percent, the world needs solutions like iUNU today.”

This funding brings iUNU’s total backing raised to-date to $13.5 million, following a $6 million round in August 2017 that included Liquid 2 Ventures, which was founded by NFL great Joe Montana; 2nd Avenue Partners; Initialized Capital – the firm launched by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian; Fuel Capital, and others.

“When we saw how differentiated LUNA is from the other solutions in this space, we knew we had to invest in iUNU,” said Liquid 2 Ventures at the time. “LUNA provides a truly comprehensive understanding of each plant’s health and growth, focused on the plant’s actual performance, not just the environment around it. Closing the control loop has the potential to change the equation of the economics of commercial-scale, indoor horticulture.”

-Lynda Kiernan