The weed-zapping lasers from Seattle agriculture-tech startup Carbon Robotics are on the radar of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In an appearance on the Theo Von podcast “This Past Weekend,” which aired on Thursday, Kennedy and Von got into a discussion about herbicides. In 2018, Kennedy helped win a $289 million settlement against Roundup maker Monsanto in a lawsuit claiming the weed killer caused a California man’s cancer.
Kennedy said “all the row croppers” are still dependent on such products, “but other technology is emerging.” He said he’d gotten a look at such equipment this week as an image of Carbon Robotics’ LaserWeeder was shown in the podcast video.
“It’s a tractor attachment that uses lasers to kill weeds,” he said. “If they can make that affordable, particularly for smaller farmers, that will be the answer. You program this thing and it zaps the weed with a laser, it makes all the cells explode and it destroys them.
“There’s a future that we can now see the light at the end of tunnel,” Kennedy added.
Carbon founder and CEO Paul Mikesell added some comments about Kennedy’s plug in a video the company posted on X (above).
“This is great, I’m glad this is being shown and coming to light,” Mikesell said, adding that running the machines at night, constantly killing weeds, is indeed “sick,” as Von stated.
While Kennedy said, “This is going to be the future … but we’re not there yet,” Mikesell said he thinks “we are there” and the LaserWeeder is a production machine being used by farmers across the U.S. and around the world.
Mikesell also sent a statement to GeekWire on Friday morning, further elaborating on the conversation Kennedy had with Von about herbicides:
“As the Health Secretary pointed out, the LaserWeeder can help farmers get the best crops out of their land without spraying chemicals that have harmful effects on their health and long-term degenerative effects on their land. Because they didn’t have other choices, farmers have historically faced pressure to use chemicals like glyphosate to help meet demand for crops. But they also have recognized that those very chemicals cause real long-term damage to the human biome. Now, they’re turning to other solutions like the LaserWeeder that provide the ability to grow food without spraying chemicals everywhere. It’s also worth pointing out that weeds are getting resistant to these herbicides, so regardless of people reaching the conclusion that glyphosate is dangerous, it won’t matter because these plants will become resistant in the end. We need other solutions that bolster food safety, and that’s where LaserWeeder can help.”
Founded in 2018, Carbon Robotics made its name across ag-tech with the LaserWeeder, a machine which can be pulled behind a tractor and uses computer vision and AI to detect plants in fields and then target and eliminate weeds with lasers. The latest iteration, the LaserWeeder G2, was released last February.
Earlier this month, Carbon announced the launch of what it calls the world’s first “Large Plant Model” — an AI model for plant detection and identification. “Trained on the largest, most diverse, and fastest growing agricultural dataset ever built with 150 million labeled plants, the LPM enables farmers to start laser weeding any field or crop in minutes,” the company said in a news release.
Last October, Carbon raised $20 million in new funding to support the creation of another piece of AI-powered machinery for farms that it has yet to reveal. Carbon previously unveiled the Carbon ATK, an autonomous platform designed to fit on and control existing farm equipment.
The company has raised $177 million to date and now employs about 260 people. It runs a manufacturing facility in Richland, Wash., and Mikesell previously said LaserWeeders are active on hundreds of farms and in 15 countries around the world.
Ranked No. 9 on the GeekWire 200 list of top privately held startups based across the Pacific Northwest, Carbon has previously been backed by NVIDIA and Seattle-based Fuse and Voyager Capital.
Kennedy was a high-profile environmental lawyer best known for challenging corporate polluters before he launched a long-shot presidential bid in the 2024 election. He was appointed by President Donald Trump to lead Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for overseeing national health programs and key public-health bodies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
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