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xihelm
Automated handwork robot to harvest greenhouse crops
- 21-100 employees
- B2B
- Artificial Intelligence
- Robotics
- Agriculture
- Bermondsey, London, UK
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Company mission
xihelm's mission is to create through its own AI computer vision platform, a solution that works in unpredictable, organic environments and addresses labour shortages in the farming industry.
Our take
Xihelm boasts a leading technical team of software/hardware engineers and PhD researchers with extensive commercial experience, patents and publications to their names. Deep learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence allow Xihelm's robots to be fast, precise and reliable. With robots deployed at numerous grower sites, the company is moving fast to implement its vision of how crops will be harvested in the future.
The global food and agriculture industry is estimated to be worth at least $8 trillion. Consumers, retailers and farmers alike are hungry for the next generation of food, and investors are beginning to acquire the taste, too. Early-stage investment in agrifood tech startups reached $10.1 billion in 2017, a 29% increase on the previous year. The development of new technologies could help solve a labor crisis in agriculture which saw labor costs rise by between 9-12 percent in the U.K in 2017.
The agrifood market is huge and filled with opportunities for investment but it still raises doubts among tech investors. Farmers are understandably risk-averse and digitisation is growing, but through very small steps. Farmers' aversion is mainly explained with the seasonality and fallibility of their activity which entails that any missed harvest can have tragic and long-lasting consequences. Implementing any large-scale technological solution represents a considerable risk and altering consolidated procedures is a decision that isn't taken lightly.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Benefits
- Company pension contributions
- Meaningful, EMI-compliant share options - so when we make it big, you do too!
- Private health, dental and life insurance
- Regular team offsites / fun events
- Learning & development budget
Company values
- Individual ownership and accountability
- Internal transparency and open communication
- Keen to understand the perspectives of other team members, customers, partners and investors
- Work hard, act with urgency and deliver when promised
- We never say tasks are “too small, it’s too easy” (we just do them) or “too large, that’s insane!” (we find a way!)
Funding (1 round)
Apr 2017
$0.2m
GRANT
Total funding: $0.2m
This company has top investors
Leadership
James Kent
(CEO)Bachelor of Science at London School of Economics and postgraduate studies at University of Oxford. Previously worked at Pearson in Education Innovation and at Google for 5 years.