Stout Industrial Technology
"Machines that think, Machines that work."
Salinas, California agtech firm whose AI vision Smart Cultivator automates in-row and inter-row weeding for vegetable growers in 7 countries.
Stout Industrial Technology is an agricultural artificial-intelligence company based in Salinas, California, in the center of the Salinas Valley vegetable-growing region. It was founded in 2019 and sold its first Smart Cultivator in 2020. The company builds machine-vision equipment that automates labor-intensive field work, starting with weeding, and says its machines have accumulated thousands of hours of field use.
The flagship Smart Cultivator is a tractor-mounted implement that uses an AI-equipped vision system to recognize each weed and crop plant individually and remove weeds both within and between rows. Stout states 99.99% plant-recognition accuracy, coverage of 1 to 2 acres per hour depending on soil conditions, and operation by day or night. The machine attaches to a 3-point hitch and is driven from a 1000 RPM PTO through its own PTO-driven hydraulic pump, with no electrical or hydraulic connections to the tractor. It features seed-line tracking and quick seed-line adjustment, and the company markets it for 80 to 160 inch beds with claimed labor reductions of about 80%.
The product line has expanded beyond weeding. Smart Rate Fertilizer is described by Stout as the first plant-by-plant variable-rate technology, using real-time plant analytics to control the fertilizer dose applied to each plant. Stout Cortex is an analytics and decision-support layer that converts plant-level data such as spacing, uniformity, biomass and growth rate into bed-by-bed insights and pre-harvest yield forecasts. These products run on Stout's True Vision technology, which processes imagery on edge devices mounted on the machines.
Stout reports more than 45 grower customers across 7 countries. Named customers include Tanimura & Antle, JV Smith, Monette Produce, Hitchcock Farms and JEPCO. In December 2022 CNH Industrial made a corporate minority investment in the company, and a further $7.51 million round was raised in the same month. Paul Bonnett has been appointed CEO.
Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:
Smart Cultivator
- Launch Year: 2020
AI vision cultivator that removes weeds in-row and inter-row, day or night, on a 3-point hitch.
Smart Rate Fertilizer
Plant-by-plant variable-rate fertilizer application driven by real-time plant analytics.
Stout Cortex
Plant- and bed-level analytics on spacing, uniformity, biomass and growth for decisions and yield forecasts.
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Contact Stout Industrial Technology
WEBSITE
https://www.stout.ai/PHONE
+1 831 455 1004HEADQUARTERS
United States
Company Facts
Founded
2019
Primary Role
Manufacturer
Company Size
-
Primary Region
North America
Annual Sales
-
Funding Stage
-
Funding Total
-
