Seattle startup Carbon Robotics gets another shout-out from RFK Jr. with its weeding robots
Carbon Robotics, a Seattle startup that builds robots that farmers use to eliminate weeds without using chemicals, has received another vote of confidence from the nation’s health policy leader.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the US secretary of health and human services, applauded the company’s equipment in a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experiencepopular long-form podcast to top global Spotify charts in 2025.
Kennedy said the technology is a way to eliminate pesticides on farms and help farmers save costs. He said he recently met three farmers who use the Carbon machine, which is attached to the back of a tractor and uses a lot of AI technology to find plants in the fields and target and eliminate weeds with lasers, without disturbing the microbiology of the soil.
A major onion producer in Texas is saving more than $1,000 per acre by using Carbon equipment due to reduced pesticide use and labor costs, Kennedy said.
“We have to get rid of these things, we have to give these farmers a road to cross,” he said about the use of pesticides. He added: “There are all these exciting new technologies that give us light at the end of the tunnel to change. And it can be very fast. What the president wants to do is accelerate that.”
Carbon Robotics CEO and founder Paul Mikesell followed up with video comments responding to Kennedy’s comments on the podcast.
“We want to see more investment in the space, more ways that we can take the new technology that we’ve been creating – in things like AI, self-driving cars, etc. – and use it in farming and in our agricultural industry so that farmers can be more productive and we can get healthy food,” said Mikesell.
The discussion about pesticides and Carbon technology starts at the 1:51 mark in the episode.
Earlier this month, Kennedy cited Carbon machines in an episode of Theo Von’s “Last Weekend” podcast, making similar comments about a new technology that could curb the use of pesticides on farms.
Founded in 2018, Carbon has raised $177 million to date and employs approximately 260 people. It operates a manufacturing facility in Richland, Wash., and Mikesell previously said its LaserWeeder machines operate on hundreds of farms in 15 countries around the world.
Mikesell is a technologist and entrepreneur who co-founded the data storage company Isilon Systems (which sold for $2.25 billion in 2010) and led the infrastructure engineering team at Uber for four years.
Earlier this month, Carbon announced the launch of what it calls the world’s first “Big 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, 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 development of another piece of AI-powered farm machinery that it has yet to disclose. Earlier, Carbon unveiled Carbon ATK, a standalone platform designed to fit and control existing farm equipment.
The company’s sponsors include BOND; Anthos Capital; FUSE, Ignition; Revolution; Sozo Ventures; and Voyager.
