company

Our Mission

Prosperous Diet to the Next Generation

There are many rich food cultures in the world. Could we inherit this richness of human culture for future generations? Existing food production systems are threatened by problems such as climate change. We are researching and developing sustainable agriculture through computational science and robot technology to pass on our rich food culture to the next generation.

Message from CEO

Yuki Ichikawa

CEO

Today, many indoor vertical farms for fruits keep honeybees pollinating the flowers, as in conventional farms. However, bees are often too stressed to fly well and die quickly in closed spaces such as indoor vertical farms. These problems lead to lower pollination rates and poor hygiene.
Furthermore, honeybee populations are declining worldwide. Is it sustainable and ethical to dispose of honeybees for a short period?
Indoor vertical farms, which can grow plants in a stable environment, will become increasingly important in the future due to climate change and other factors. Pollination methods that do not rely on bees will become increasingly necessary in this context.
HarvestX will realize automated solutions for indoor vertical farms using robots to pass on today's rich food culture to the next generation.

Company Information

Company name

HarvestX Inc.

Business details

Researching and developing robots for indoor farming

Founded

July 2020

Capital

100 million JPY

CEO

Yuki Ichikawa

Address

216 Entrepreneur Lab,
South Clinical Research Building, The University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo

Office

Headquarter

〒113-8485

216 Entrepreneur Lab,
South Clinical Research Building, The University of Tokyo,
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo

Partners

Microsoft
NVIDIA
UTokyoIPC
AWS

History of HarvestX Inc.

The HarvestX project started at the Hongo Tech Garage, a project space for students at the University of Tokyo, with a simple idea to apply robot technology to agriculture. Through numerous interviews with indoor vertical farms and food manufacturers and many experiments, we recognized the potential of indoor vertical farms for growing fruits. We focused on developing an automated pollination robot, a significant challenge in fruit growing. In the process, we succeeded in pollinating strawberries with a robot for the first time in the world.
Afterwards, we founded HarvestX Inc. to implement the technology in society, not just university research.

2018.12

Yuki started HarvestX project at Hongo Tech Garage at the University of Tokyo

2019.9

Won Todai To Texas 2020 "DemoDayAward"

2020.8

Selected to UTokyoIPC "1stRound" program

2020.12

Raised seed round funding

2021.1

Selected to a supported company from Division of University Corporate Relation at University of Tokyo

2021.6

Founded HarvestX Lab

2021.1

Certificated as NVIDIA's "InceptionProgram" partner

2021.12

Selected to Microsoft's "Microsoft for Startups"