Can indoor farming finally put down roots?

If there were a "cemetery of agribusiness," it would have a sizable section filled with vertical farming startups that died in the early 2020s.

Enticed by the prospect of skyscrapers full of lettuce, VCs poured billions into companies that promised to save space and minimize agricultural waste by growing crops at scale indoors.

Unfortunately, that's not how it shook out:

• Bowery Farming raised $700m to grow pesticide-free leafy greens in urban centers, only to cease operations in 2024.

• Investors sank $940m in Plenty Unlimited, an outlet specializing in vertically farmed berries, before it filed for bankruptcy in 2025.

• Florida-based Kalera raised over $200 million before going bust in 2023.

So where did these indoor farming businesses go wrong?

Software development costs, founders' lack of actual farming experience, and unsound business models, to name a few — but energy and infrastructure costs may have been the main culprit.

Photosynthesis requires sunlight (hello, B+ in AP Bio), and several indoor farms racked up unsustainable electricity bills trying to replace it with LED lights.

Could there be another way?

California startup Hippo Harvest separates itself from those companies with two key tenets:

• It uses the actual sun.
  
• It gets robots involved.

The startup eschews the notion of "vertical farming," housing its crops in high-tech greenhouses rather than in multi-level, space-saving buildings.

Though other companies have used similar structures, Hippo Harvest differentiates itself with who tends its crops: autonomous mobile robots that function like tiny indoor tractors. Think Roomba meets John Deere.

The results, per the company: 92% less water use, 94% less land, zero pesticides, and a price point competitive with outdoor-grown produce.

What's next?

Hippo Harvest just closed a $30m Series C backed by greenhouse giant Cox Farms, unlocking a 30-acre expansion in Hollister, California.

Though scaling that aggressively could backfire, it just got a massive vote of confidence from one of the world's largest growers.

That kind of bet isn't a science project — it's a legitimate supply chain play.