The problem
Greenhouse tomato and asparagus growers race the ripening curve every day with fewer and older workers. Harvest is the most labor-intensive step, it happens in narrow windows, and in Japan fewer young workers will do night picking at any wage.
How it works
Inaho’s AI robot patrols the greenhouse at night, spots ripe snack tomatoes with vision models, and picks them while the grower sleeps; a sibling machine harvests asparagus. The robots run under a Robot-as-a-Service plan, and the company also co-develops cropping systems and farm-operation schemes with partners. Its approach won the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Award at the 9th ROBOT AWARD.
Pain points
Peak-season hands that never show up, wage bills that climb every year, and night-shift harvest work nobody wants.
Business model
No robot sale: growers subscribe to harvesting-as-a-service with running costs the company pitches as comparable to manual labor, while Inaho keeps the hardware, software updates, and operations know-how.
Challenges
The tomato robot still harvests only about 40% of matured fruit, with humans covering the rest by day; every new crop means training new vision models; and pushing into the Netherlands puts Inaho against the world’s most advanced greenhouse-automation incumbents.
Funding
- Raised: undisclosed (backed by Japanese agri-food investors; amount unverifiable — omitted).
- Valuation: MISSING.
Latest — November 2023
In November 2023 Inaho was trialing its snack-tomato harvester with Dutch growers for fees and seeking partner farms toward commercialization, while preparing asparagus-robot leasing — positioning its night-shift RaaS model for the world’s most demanding greenhouse market.