Indian AI-robotics startup Niqo Robotics is expanding its US footprint beyond lettuce into turf grass and a wider basket of specialty crops, and will roll out a next-generation version of its RoboWeeder platform in the second half of 2026, founder and CEO Jaisimha Rao told AgFunderNews. The company is targeting group profitability in fiscal 2026-27 and has already onshored US manufacturing.
From 11 units to a Pacific Northwest turf push
Niqo now operates more than 50 tractor-mounted units across India and 11 units across California, Arizona and Georgia, with turf grass in Washington and Oregon lined up as the next target. New crop libraries let the existing hardware handle onions, tomatoes, broccoli, kale and melons alongside its original lettuce workloads. First-year US units averaged around 1,500 acres per season — well above the 1,000-acre plan — displacing hand crews that would cost roughly $200 an acre.
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Unlike some robots-as-a-service rivals, Niqo sells RoboWeeder outright at $350,000 per unit through a dealer channel that takes a 20-25% commission. Rao argues the upfront model is the only way to prove product-market fit: "Only when you go to a farmer and say it's $350,000 to buy this do you get a clear answer." Payback lands in a 12-18-month window in California and Arizona, driven overwhelmingly by labor savings on hand weeding.
Nvidia chip crunch bites even ag robots
Niqo has moved US manufacturing out of India ahead of tariffs, keeping camera modules the only India-sourced component. The bigger squeeze is silicon: "The amount of capital going into AI data centers, all the chips, all the memory, they're getting sucked in, and a dinky little robotics startup is bottom of the totem pole," Rao said. That aligns with the wider hyperscaler crunch driving deals like NVIDIA's $5B SSI bet and AMD's MI455X ramp. Niqo competes with Verdant Robotics, Ecorobotix and Carbon Robotics in US specialty crop weeding, and says it does not go head-to-head with John Deere's See & Spray, which focuses on broad-acre row crops.
Reporting based on coverage from AgFunderNews and Roboticsandautomationnews.com.