March 22, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

On a global scale, the world has lost a third of its arable land over the past 40 years to the effects of pollution or erosion at a rate that far outpaces the natural rate of soil replacement, according to a team at the Grantham Center for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield. The processes of agricultural production and heavy-handed use of fertilizers has eroded our soils at a pace that is 100 times faster than it is able to be naturally formed. 

However, when considering solutions, Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) (once overlooked as a viable alternative to the growing issue of providing food for an ever-populous world) has gained steady traction, especially since COVID-19 has highlighted the vulnerability of current ag supply chains.

CEA, however, is not without its challenges. Commercial greenhouse operators have a lot of irons in the fire, needing to balance a wide range of conditions such as temperature, humidity, crop diseases, and pests, for example, while also needing to produce a large, uniformly standard crop of fresh produce for buyers who await a future harvest.

In reality, it’s not uncommon  for commercial greenhouse production facilities to see crop losses of 10- 25 percent due to inconsistencies, poor visibility, inaccurate data, human error, and inefficiency related to manual data collection.

There is help, however, from IUNU, which just announced the successful completion of a $24 million Series B led by Lewis & Clark AgriFood, and including existing investors S2G Ventures, Ceres Partners, and Astanor Ventures.

Under the terms of the round, Suhas Narayanaswamy, principal, Lewis and Clark AgriFood, will be given a seat on the IUNU board of directors. 

Founded in 2013 with a headquarters in Seattle, Washington, IUNU is working to develop the future of CEA and close the loop on greenhouse autonomy. The company’s LUNA platform connects producers, managers, facilities, and plants on one interface. By scanning entire greenhouse operations, LUNA is able to collect extremely granular data on every aspect of the growing process, including real-time growth rates and data on the health of each plant.

“Greenhouse and vertical farming solve critical issues around food security, food safety and scarcity,” said Cristina Rohr, managing director, S2G Ventures. “IUNU’s technology brings incredible efficiency gains to indoor farming and is providing the foundation for data-driven indoor growing operations going forward.”

The company made its debut in the leafy greens market, and today, as the CEA market is experiencing unprecedented growth, IUNU has more than a 25 percent share of the North American CEA market, and 74 percent of the top leafy greens greenhouse growers in North America running on LUNA.

This customer base includes some of the largest CEA operations in the world such as Pure Green Farms, Hollandia Produce, CubicFarm Systems, the Red Hat Co-operative, Jamco Growers, and Intelligent Growth Solutions. 

“The CEA market has finally come to a point of proven expansion and we’re honored to be trusted by commercial operators who run their businesses on the LUNA Platform,” said Allison Kopf, chief marketing officer and head of data products, IUNU. “This investment will be used to continue fueling our growth as we become the largest advanced technology company in the CEA industry.”

As demand for its solutions continues to climb, IUNU has hundreds of robots already deployed, and 500 more scheduled for deployment this year – more than any other company in its segment. 

This growth has seen the company expand its team by 50 percent over the past six months, undertake a brand re-fresh, and recently complete two acquisitions of leading companies in the space: Artemis and CropWalk.

“IUNU has an unmatchable stack of comprehensive product offerings that have been built and refined since 2013 making them the technology of choice for greenhouse and vertical farming operations,” said Suhas Narayanaswamy, principal, Lewis and Clark AgriFood. “We are thrilled to be part of a company that is enabling the world’s largest CEA companies to be more efficient and ultimately enable consumers to access better quality fresh produce.”

The company has stated that the capital from this round will be used to further its strategic growth plans and market presence, with a specific focus on the expansion of global sales and new production introductions.

“This round of investment reflects the confidence institutional investors have in us,” said Adam Greenberg, CEO, IUNU. “The conversation around autonomous growing has accelerated in the past year, and we’re proud to be leading the way on this front. We couldn’t be more excited to add Lewis and Clark as a partner and to have our existing investors continue growing with us.”

– Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com. 

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