Scotts Valley’s Neatleaf bets on AI and analytics in ag, starting with cannabis cultivation

Elmar Mair spent years in various technology roles, gaining first-hand experience with emerging technologies like robotics, self-driving cars and automation. As head of perception at X Development LLC (formerly known as Google X, the company’s semisecret research and development organization), he was heavily involved with robotics and environmental perception, the ability of robots to react to changes in the surrounding environment based on the use of sensors. 

The Santa Cruz resident became interested in how this same technology could be applied to the agriculture space, as part of what’s known as the “fourth agricultural revolution.” He toured a greenhouse and saw how growers were starting to use sensors to measure things like temperature and humidity. That sparked the idea of using sensors to measure more factors that impact plants’ growth, such as air flow and light levels. There was far more potential for collecting this type of data, he said.

“It was like this crazy realization that we still rely heavily on human beings when it comes to cultivation,” he said. “In every other industry, whenever you want to optimize a process, the first thing you do is collect the data … and in cultivation, the foundation of our food system, we just haven’t done that yet. We rely on humans to navigate that incredibly complex space where you have plants growing under conditions which are all correlated, like airflow, temperature, humidity, nutrients, carbon dioxide, irrigation and light. And it’s all just entangled.”

Inspired, he started Neatleaf in the summer of 2020, and decided to focus first on the cannabis industry, which he saw as a rapidly emerging market with a bigger appetite for innovation and technology compared to other sectors. 

While estimates vary, some analysts predict U.S. retail cannabis sales could reach upward of $53.5 billion by 2027, even as California state tax records show sales slumping over the past year. New markets continue to open, both domestically and internationally, and as demand rises, the market for cannabis technology (aka cannatech) is also growing. 

Neatleaf’s invention, Neatleaf Spyder, is a farming robot that can be used in controlled environments like greenhouses to monitor and analyze individual plants. The device collects information about growing conditions and monitors the health of each plant. Think of it like a Roomba that moves along cables over the top of plants, scans them and collects data. That information can then be used to make adjustments at the plant level, such as changing the amount of water a single plant receives, without requiring humans to go in and check on each plant. Being able to quickly and easily make these changes can help growers increase yields and better use available resources, according to Mair. It can span football field-sized areas, and is highly scalable. 

The technology is currently in use with cultivators around the U.S. and Canada, including three in the Monterey Bay area.

That includes Santa Cruz-based 3 Bros Grow, which has been working with Neatleaf since the early conceptual days of the Spyder.

“We started increasing our production last summer and are constantly ramping up,” said Mair. “We now have a backlog of orders until mid-April … we haven’t lost a single customer yet. They’ve all come back and wanted more, which is exciting.”

Ramping up operations, growing production and further fine-tuning the technology are all on the immediate roadmap, fueled in part by a $4 million funding round the company secured earlier this year. While initial efforts have focused on cannabis, Mair is quick to point out Neatleaf Spyder isn’t a cannabis-specific technology, and says he’s eager to see what other crops it can be rolled out for. 

“We’re exploring other adjacent markets, like other crops, and getting feedback outside of cannabis to ensure that the system is evolving in the right direction to also support all these other crops,” said Mair. “We’ve worked really hard over the last three, four years and now I’m excited to actually see how the system can provide value in these cultivations.”

Neatleaf is currently headquartered on Green Hills Road in Scotts Valley, where nine employees work, and there’s a second office in Munich, Germany. Along with a few remote employees, that brings the company’s total headcount to 17, with plans for expansion on the horizon.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.