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Its crop-sniffing rover tech is reportedly being licensed to berry producer Driscoll’s.
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Alphabet is reportedly walking away from its Mineral robotic agriculture startup due to fierce industry competition and slim profit margins. According to Bloomberg, the Google parent company will license some of its farming technology to Driscoll’s, a berry producer that’s spent the last few years working with autonomous “plant buggies” Mineral created to study crops, soil, and other environmental factors.
Bloomberg says it’s obtained a memo in which Mineral announced plans to transfer its technology “out to the agriculture ecosystem to maximize the impact of bringing our AI to agriculture” and confirms that “Mineral will no longer be an Alphabet company.” Licensing discussions are reportedly taking place with companies that previously partnered with Mineral, alongside the agreement with Driscoll’s.
Mineral was spun into an independent subsidiary last year after graduating from Alphabet’s X lab, the experimental division that previously launched Google Glass and the Waymo self-driving car unit. Bloomberg reports that Mineral employees have spent recent months trying to find a way to continue their work after “it became clear” the company no longer had a future under Alphabet.
The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Driscoll’s senior vice president of global research and development, Scott Komar, told Bloomberg it should give Driscoll’s a perpetual license to use Mineral’s technology. “We were really disappointed that Alphabet decided to change directions,” Komar told the publication. “We have really had a great partnership with the Mineral team, and from our vantage point, they were just getting takeoff altitude. And then all of a sudden, you know, plans changed.”
While Alphabet has poured billions of dollars into “moonshot” lab projects — including fish-tracking cameras, grocery delivery drones, and internet-providing balloons — most have struggled to achieve commercial viability. It shut down Loon, its internet balloon company, in 2021, and turned to outside investors to fund its X projects back in January following a wave of job cuts within the division.