Failed AI tractor company lays off all employees, abandons Bay Area headquarters

sfgate.com

10 points·randycupertino··2 comments

> Monarch Tractor raised over $240 million for its self-driving, electric tractors guided by artificial intelligence that debuted in 2023. That year, Time called the vehicle one of the year’s greatest inventions, and Forbes predicted that the company would become the world’s next billion-dollar startup. The company was later valued at $518 million. Now, the company has abandoned its Livermore headquarters after laying off its entire staff last year and warning it may “shut down.”

The instagram video of a farmer trying it out is interesting- the farmer noted it was dangerous and the only thing he could successfully get it to do was split logs: https://www.instagram.com/p/DWec9aukq-Q/

In my mind tractors are just plain dangerous. I can't say I have driven tractors that much but I've put them in ditches and have gotten closer to rollovers on tractors without a ROPS than I like. I've heard a lot of stories about people getting caught up in PTOs and it's famous that a young man was driving down a hill with a haywagon and had the transmission pop out of gear and couldn't get it back in and died when the tractor crashed at the bottom of the hill.

So I wouldn't expect it to be safe around an autonomous tractor and even with an operator I trust I always have an exit plan and know where I'm going to bail if I see the machine going the wrong way.

Overall agri-tech is challenging. Personally I am not so interested in more AI-generated Nobel Prize winners as I am in machines that can pick strawberries, change bedpans and do other things we need.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com