Q&A with CEO of Verdant Robotics, Gabe Sibley

Verdant Robotics seeks to expand its precision solutions to more crops.

Illustration of a bearded man wearing a blue jacket, a blue hat with the Verdant Robotics logo on it in green, and dark-framed glasses.
Photo:

Illustration by Matt Wood

Gabe Sibley, the CEO and cofounder of Verdant Robotics, is looking to make an immediate impact on the world through his work. 

In 2018, Sibley and Curtis Garner launched Verdant Robotics, a Silicon Valley company developing precision spraying solutions. It brings an array of technologies together to apply inputs down to the millimeter level. This system uses multiple-view geometry, hyperspectral imaging, inertial sensors, light detection and ranging (lidar), kinematic sensors, and GPS when available. 

Verdant’s service is currently available only for specialty row crop operations, but the company is running trials for corn and soybean applications in the Midwest, and units are available for purchase now.

SF: How did Verdant Robotics get its start? 

GS: Garner is the farmer DNA in the business. He helped me understand the challenges in agriculture and to understand how technology could help with the way the labor market is shaping up, the way input costs are going, the amount of food we need to produce — none of this squares unless we find new solutions.

We went on a listening tour for six months to hear what types of problems farmers had and what was a good fit for the technology. Ultimately we arrived at delivering inputs on target. This gave us the ability to give plants the nutrients that they need to grow, with the direction an agronomist would want them to grow if they were out there applying the inputs with a paintbrush. We came up with a generalizable hardware platform that works on different crops without changing the hardware. It’s a software job where we change computer vision models and machine learning models when we go from crop to crop. 

SF: How does Verdant work with farmers?  

GS: We sell farmers the Verdant spraying implement and support services. We’re able to give farmers significant ROI from day one — often 50% or greater. We are there with skin in the game. We bring the technology, but the farmer brings the grower and agronomy knowledge. We accelerate the discovery of the technology’s value together.

SF: Can you share how Verdant works in practical use?

GS: We offer a multi-action, multi-crop platform for weeding, thinning, and pollination — application of inputs — things that a farmer already pays for. Verdant’s technology allows them to do that for less. Often we use up to 95% less chemical input. It’s an implement on the back of the tractor with all of the intelligence around computer vision and machine learning. It’s an intelligent sharpshooter that rides along on the back and makes the decisions needed to maximize outcomes. 

SF: What industry-wide technological developments have assisted Verdant?

GS: There’s a whole confluence of industries that are being adopted in agriculture, and have been for a long time. Ag is super advanced. Farmers are advanced appliers of technology and always have been. Outdoor, unstructured, off-road autonomy is starting to cross the threshold where we’re seeing technology that is actually functional. Computers are getting to the point where they’re fast enough, and algorithms are getting to the point where they’re mature enough. Machine learning and computer vision are now able to deliver value in unstructured, uncertain environments.

SF: Where do you see Verdant Robotics in five years?

GS: We’d like to transform as much of growing as we possibly can. We would like to be farming sustainably for as many crops as possible here in California, across the country, and around the world. The value that can be delivered is substantial and is deeply important to keeping highly profitable farms going and growing sustainably.

More about Gabe Sibley

Background: Technologist and roboticist working at NASA on the Mars Rover missions; CSO at Zoox, a self-driving car company; and founder of Zippy, an autonomous robot last-mile delivery service.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in math and computer science at Emory University, Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Southern California, research scientist at Oxford University, and a professor of computer science at George Washington University and the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

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