HarvestX Inc.

HarvestX Inc. is a Japanese agricultural robotics startup that develops and sells robots for pollination and harvesting in plant factories. The project began in December 2018 at the University of Tokyo's Hongo Tech Garage, won the Demo Day Award at Todai To Texas in September 2019, and was incorporated in August 2020. The head office is in the Entrepreneur Lab at the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; a Hamamatsu branch (opened November 2023) and the Hamamatsu Farm are located in Chuo-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka. The representative director and president is Yuki Ichikawa, and the stated capital is JPY 100 million.

The company's product, also named HarvestX, is an automated cultivation solution for artificial-light strawberry plant factories, covering cultivation equipment, robots, AI and operations systems from seedling growth through pollination and harvest. Its pollination robot uses cameras and 3D image analysis to locate flowers that need pollination and pollinates them automatically, using an algorithm based on analysis of bee behaviour; Sumitomo Corporation describes it as the world's first robot able to pollinate strawberries automatically, with a success rate consistently above 90% versus about 70% for bee pollination. Fruit detection algorithms include flower orientation detection and ripeness classification for yield prediction. Robot control is built on ROS 2 and simulation, and some in-house ROS 2 components are published as open source on GitHub. The core AI and robotics technology is covered by Japanese Patent No. 7090953. Strawberries are the current crop, with melons, kiwifruit and tomatoes planned.

HarvestX raised JPY 50 million in January 2021, JPY 150 million in March 2022 and JPY 410 million in March 2024. In March 2026 Sumitomo Corporation formed a capital and business alliance with the company, including work with a Malaysian partner on local strawberry production, and Mitsubishi Corporation announced an investment partnership in July 2026. HarvestX was selected for UTokyo IPC's 1st Round programme, the NVIDIA Inception Program, Microsoft for Startups, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' startup large-scale technology demonstration support programme.