The founders of Upside Robotics met in 2023. Both wanted to build an impact-driven company that impacts climate and agriculture. Less than a year later, they were sleeping in a camper on the side of a Canadian cornfield, building a robotics startup.
Waterloo, Ontario-based Upside Robotics builds lightweight, solar-powered autonomous robots that deliver the right amount of fertilizer and nutrients to crops when they need them. The company’s software runs on a proprietary algorithm that uses weather and soil data to decipher when and how much fertilizer plants need.
Upside’s robots are currently working on growing corn, one of the most fertilizer-intensive crops, and Upside chose it for that very reason, co-founder and CEO Jana Tian told TechCrunch.
After Tian and co-founder and chief technology officer Sam Dugan met at Entrepreneurs First Accelerator, they decided to focus on using robots to reduce fertilizer waste. That’s because robots fit right into the center of the Venn diagram of their interests. It also applied well to their backgrounds.
Dugan has been building robots since he was 10 years old, and Tian had many years of experience as a chemical engineer in Unilever’s food division.
Customer discovery with farmers further confirmed that this is an area where farmers are willing to pay for better methods.
“With traditional fertilizer application methods, only 30% of the total fertilizer is absorbed by the crop, and most of it is wasted,” Tian says. “Farmers typically apply once per season, so they have to front-load a lot of fertilizer. But crops also need fertilizer during the season. We knew there was this problem that a lot of farmers really wanted a different solution to.”
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The two officially founded Upside Robotics in 2024, literally stepping into the field.
“We actually bought a camper trailer and moved it from field to field,” Dugan said. “We were on the edge of the field every night, sometimes walking around 24 hours a day. At one point, we spent the entire day in the cornfield.”
Dugan was able to build the robot and begin testing his idea in two weeks. The device was a remote control car that Dugan and Tian operated manually. They followed the robot around fields to collect data and demonstrate how the fertilizer system works to farmers.
“We built the application manually in year one, which allowed us to iterate super fast, not just on the hardware side, but by being with the farmers and learning,” Tian says. “Some of our farmers said they probably spent more time in the fields than they’ve ever spent in their entire lives. It allowed us to get done quickly. Neither of us were farmers, so we basically got to experience first-hand what it’s like to be a farmer.”
After spending the 2024 season proving the company’s concept, they spent the offseason developing the fourth generation of robots for the 2025 growth period. It expanded from 70 acres in 2024 to 1,200 acres in 2025.
The company is currently gearing up to serve more than 3,000 acres in the upcoming 2026 season and maintain 100% customer retention from the beginning. Upside reports that it has so far helped customers reduce fertilizer use by 70%, which equates to savings of approximately $150 per acre per season.
Upside recently raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Plural with participation from the founders of Garage Capital and Clearpath Robotics.
This funding will be used to continue funding research and development and meeting demand. There are more than 200 farms on the waiting list. The company also hopes to expand outside of Canada, with the goal of entering the U.S. corn belt.
“People always wonder if farmers are going to adopt new solutions, and they certainly are. As long as we can provide clear information to farmers, that’s something we’ve learned first-hand.” [return on investment] “In our case, it wasn’t something we actually had to sell to farmers, and there was a clear reason why this technology was built,” Tian said. In many cases, farmers have actually asked for this solution. ”
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