Technology as Resilience.

Reservoir VC invests in rugged AI startups that solve one high-value task in ag and then compound to adjacent industries.

Pitch your startup

Invest in our fund II

Introducing Rugged AI

Built for the hardest-to-fill and hardest-to-automate jobs.

Hardened, software-defined hardware that works in weather, terrain, and signal loss that would disable conventional systems.

01

Operates without connectivity

Perception and decision-making run entirely on-device — no cloud dependency.

02

Disruption is normal operation

Designed to handle weather, terrain, and biological variation as the default, not the exception.

03

Modular and transferable

The core stack moves across crops, machines, and industries without a rebuild.

PORTFOLIO COMPANY · BONSAI ROBOTICS

The thesis

Rugged AI unlocks in ag, compounds to other industries

Technology matures on farms first (the most complex of conditions), and maps to the similar problems in other outdoor environments.

The environment

Rugged autonomy — field operations

Rugged autonomy fills the hardest jobs — and the hardest to fill. Let the robot bear the heat, hold the harsh positions, handle the toxic exposure.

Proven in ag

autonomous tractors & carriers running full seasons in row-crop and orchard conditions

Mining · off-road haul & inspection

Energy · remote site operations

Forestry & land mgmt · terrain work, fire-fuel reduction

The object

Perception & manipulation — precision interaction

How you engage an individual object: see one irregular, deformable thing in outdoor light and clutter — then pick,
cut, or dose it without damage.

Proven in ag

apple harvest, vine pruning, plant-level targeted spray

Forestry · seedling handling, precision planting

Energy · live-line & confined-asset work

Mining · core & sample handling

The target

Treatment modality — chemical replacement

What you do to the target: light, heat, electricity as the mode of action. Efficacy is target-specific, not crop-
specific.

Proven in ag

UV-C pest control, steam soil treatment, electric & laser
weeding

Utilities & rail · herbicide-free vegetation mgmt

BLM rangeland · invasive seed bank destruction

Nurseries & aquaculture · pathogen control

Why agriculture first

Agriculture builds the grit that rugged AI requires.

Agriculture isn't the easy market, but rather the proving ground. The hardest problems live here, and what survives the field doesn't stay in the field.

01

Generational scale

$1.5T under pressure. The conditions that create category leaders.

02

The hardest problems live here

Unstructured terrain. Biological variability. Real-world autonomy.

03

Built to transfer

Built for row crops. The same AI stack powers mining, forestry, and energy.

Case in point

Chemical replacement

Precision targeting — laser, UV, mechanical weeding — is replacing herbicides in specialty crops today. The same see-and-act capability becomes vegetation management for utilities, fuel-load reduction for wildfire, selective treatment in forestry. One problem, solved in the field. Deployed everywhere.

Solved here

Agriculture

Precision & non-chemical
weeding

Transfers to

Utilities & rail

Right-of-way vegetation
management

Transfers to

Forestry

Wildfire fuel-load reduction

Transfers to

Land mgmt

Selective, chemical-free
treatment

Why now

The rugged AI stack just matured.

Startups used to build everything custom. Now the infrastructure exists — SLAM, edge compute, simulation — so founders compete on application, not plumbing. This is the window.

70%+

of farmland has no reliable signal —
now addressable

$12.2B

agricultural robotics market, growing
~25% CAGR

1 yr

of foundational perception work
startups now skip

The window opens

2018

Custom everything, high burn

2020

ROS 2 matures, shared tooling

2022

Edge compute becomes cost-viable

2024

Visual SLAM & simulation ship

Now

Visual SLAM & simulation ship

What we back

A focused fund for early-stage rugged AI and ag robotics.

The fund at a glance

Pre-seed → Series A

Stages we invest

rugged AI & ag robotics

~$750K

Average check

per company

What kind of company

Application-led

Ruggedized robotics

The robots doing the work — non-chemical weeding, harvest automation for the hardest-to-fill roles, plant-level inputting, and field monitoring that turns sensor data into action.

$12.2B → $29.9B

ag robotics market bY 2030

Capability-led

The rugged AI stack

The intelligence powering them — outdoor perception and real-world models, task-level autonomy that works without connectivity, fleet learning, and simulation that adapts across industries.

$7.3B → $19B

roboticS software platforms by 2030

compound opportunity of rugged ai

TRIC Robotics

~40× TAM

UV pest control for strawberries → multi-task crop protection

TerraBlaster

10-12x TAM

Precision soil treatment robotics — backed by Khosla Ventures post-Reservoir

Bonsai Robotics

$6B+ adjacency

Single-machine autonomy → multi-OEM, now entering mining

RESERVOIR FARMS · VALIDATED BY WESTERN GROWERS

How we help founders

Reservoir Farms – Our own proving ground.

Three working farms across California's top specialty-crop regions, where portfolio startups test in real conditions — backed by a John Deere dealer network, university research, and $8M+ in non-dilutive capital.