John Deere buys farming AI company Blue River for $305m
Farm equipment provider John Deere plans to purchase farming AI firm Blue River Technology for $305m. The 60-person start-up produces a range of farming tools, including an automatic precision weed sprayer, a lettuce trimmer and drone software for crop analysis. John Deere's tractors already incorporate limited autonomous capabilities; the purchase of Blue River will help the company build increasing amounts of intelligence into its vehicles.

If you are a weed, we have some somber news.

John Deere, the farm equipment company that’s been chasing autonomous technology for more than 20 years, has agreed to buy Blue River Technology, a startup that uses AI to automatically identify and spray herbicide on weeds. The price of a 60-person farming AI startup? $305 million.

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Blue River Technology makes a number of farm tools: an automatic precision weed-sprayer, a device that trims lettuce at scale, and software for drones to analyze crops. The company once considered using a Tesla coil to zap weeds, according to Willy Pell, Blue River’s director of new technology, which is objectively a cool idea.

John Deere’s tractors have a level of autonomy today—some can steer themselves via help from GPS signals, while image sensors can determine the quality of grain during harvesting. But the company says Blue River’s AI will allow future tractors to understand each individual plant in crops like lettuce and cotton, two areas Blue River has already showcased.

The acquisition underscores the immense value placed on AI research and development companies in recent years. Twitter infamously paid $150 million for the 11-person Magic Pony Technology in 2016, and in a deal that’s looking more and more like a steal, Google bought the DeepMind research lab in 2014 for more than $500 million.