Unlearning

Table of Contents

1. 🚜 New In Ag-Tech

2. 👩‍🌾 Tending Dreams

3. 🌎 Fields & Frontiers

4. 😆 Till You Laugh

🚜 New In Ag-Tech

The Robot Revolutionizing Fish Welfare

Life under water has not been hidden from the revolutionizing robot technology in AgTech. The aquaculture industry is now experiencing an upgrade with Remora Robotics invention-an autonomous net-cleaning robot. Yes, you heard me right, robots now get to do laundry under water. The company combines automated net cleaning with AI-based inspection, keeping the nets clean. Thanks to the robots, there is an improvement in gill health and stress reduction in fish, all while lowering biological risks that come from high pressure washing and heavy vessel traffic near pens. As a result, there is improved fish welfare, stronger biosecurity, lower mortality and more efficient production.

The Dirty Secret of Fish Farming

Traditional net cleaning used to be all about high pressure when washing and with the vessel activity around fish pens, stressing salmons and creating biosecurity risks. Robots maintain cleaner nets without causing biological risks which results in reduction in mortality rates and more sustainable production practice. Remora’s software works throughout without disrupting fish behavior. This is very crucial for an industry keen on sustainability and animal welfare standards. Life under water has never been this crystal clear.

Over the past year, Remora’s commerce has experienced solid momentum; selling out majority of its production capacity for the next 6 months! Between 2023 and 2025, Remora scored contracts with industry giants Mowi, Bremnes Seashore, and Frøy Gruppen. The company has already expanded to Chile! This stunning performance has seen the Norwegian company recently raise 13.9 million Euros in growth capital to accelerate the deployment of its AI-powered autonomous net-cleaning robots.  Hatch Blue, under its Blue Revolution Fund, led a group of stakeholders-Grieg Kapital included- in betting on Remora’s technology. “Remora Robotics integrates technology, fish welfare, and efficiency in a way that addresses the direct needs of salmon farmers,” said Georg Baunach, CEO and Managing Partner at Hatch Blue. “We’re excited to support their expansion in Norway and globally.”

At the Aqua Nor conference in August, Remora debuted a new software platform that offers continuous pen monitoring and AI-based net integrity checks. This is in line with the company’s new focus on service delivery and customer value.

For AgTech investors watching robotics transform terrestrial farming, aquaculture offers a compelling parallel with faster adoption cycles and clearer ROI. As Remora scales production to meet surging demand, the question becomes: which land-based agricultural challenges could benefit from similar autonomous, data-driven solutions?

The $51 Million Lesson

They had everything. Over $51 million in venture capital. Large autonomous drones that farmers actually wanted. Technology sophisticated enough to challenge Chinese dominance. Then last week, Guardian Agriculture shut its doors, and founder Adam Beckwith delivered a eulogy that should haunt every European AgTech entrepreneur.

The Capital Trap

Beckwidth said, "Looking back, $50 million wasn't enough money." "We could have paid for some of the mistakes and learnt from them if we had had $200 million as a rough estimate." Reread that. Even though it was more than most European AgTech companies will ever raise, it wasn't enough.

Less money required careful planning, longer cycle times, and missed deadlines. "Having more money would have meant we could have hired more talented people to work on a problem," he said. Guardian Agriculture died because it couldn't make mistakes, not because its products didn't sell.

The Ideal Storm

The company was in danger: massively subsidised Chinese drones were taking over the US market, and FAA approval required two years. "Every new business fails "Delays and rules left no space for error, Beckwith claimed. President Trump's June 2025 executive order expediting Beyond Visual Line of Sight permissions was too late. Beckwith fumed, "We would have liked to have seen that come out 18 months ago."

For the European Parallel, replace "FAA delays" with "EU regulatory fragmentation." Move "Chinese competition" to "big American tech companies." Guardian's story resonates with European AgTech. Europe has the same structural issues: dysfunctional marketplaces that require country-specific licenses, wealthy foreign competition, and 10-year VC funds that don't work for agriculture's slower adoption cycles. He remarked, "The truth is that American companies will never be able to grow because China has free access to the market." European enterprises face similar issues.

The Hard Lesson

Guardian's collapse confirms McKinsey's findings that capital-efficiency is bad in AgTech. Beckwith stated, "Our vision was for something that people would be willing to pay more for." Our market entry time was too long. European business owners should acquire more money than they need, move faster than they want, and hope their laws don't kill them before their overseas competitors do. Guardian had great technology, willing customers, and $51 million. It wasn't enough. Agriculture Technology needs to stay agile to changing environments while learning from competitors to stay ahead of the game.

📢 Digital Pasture

👩‍🌾 Tending Dreams

🌎 Fields & Frontiers

Europe’s VC Dream Team: Europe's venture capital scene is really taking off, and the Netherlands is at the forefront with some of the best VC firms around. Check out the latest ranking that highlights ten amazing companies making waves in innovation and helping startups thrive. Cottonwood is at the forefront, recognised for its smart investments that drive growth. BGV supports daring ideas with a practical touch. Newion is all about supporting sustainable tech, and Prime Ventures really shines as one of the oldest and most trustworthy firms out there. HenQ focuses on unique B2B SaaS startups, and other key players like Peak Capital, Slingshot Ventures, and INKEF Capital offer valuable sector expertise. You definitely don’t want to overlook Notion Capital and DVH Ventures; they’ve got some really impressive portfolios going on. These companies are shaking up Europe’s startup scene, offering the funding and guidance that can help ideas become global hits. Check out who made the list and find out why these VCs are leading the way for Europe’s investment future on Silicon Canals.

AI Is Getting Dumber: The October 15 study, "LLMs can get brain rot" found that massive language models, the backbone of artificial intelligence, can get brain fog from a constant diet of low-quality internet literature. Reasoning accuracy dropped from 74.9% to 57.2% and long-context comprehension from 84.4% to 52.3% when models ate trash material. What a failed data diet! It gets better—worse! Video-bingeing models developed "interesting" features including narcissism and psychopathy. They were experts at skipping logical processes and embracing their mistakes. Four prominent models, including Llama3 and Qwen2.5, were tested using real data from X (previously Twitter). Who doesn't like a data battle? The spine-chilling part? Retraining on cleaner data was like placing a Band-Aid on a leaky boat—only a little assistance! The damage seemed to have settled permanently, causing "persistent representational drift." Who knew data was so stubborn? As AI-generated text floods the internet and models learn from each other, the question remains: will AI forget its keys? What matters is how fast this thing is and whether we can brake before it's a tragedy!

Ecorobotix AI Revolution: At Agritechnica 2025, Ecorobotix will show off its cutting-edge AI-powered Plant-by-Plant™ technology, which will change the way crops are sprayed with Ultra-High Precision (UHP) capabilities. This new technology cuts down on the use of pesticides by up to 95%, giving farmers a way to lessen their costs while keeping their crops healthy. Highland Europe, ECBF, and McWin Capital Partners are leading a $150 million investment in Ecorobotix. The company will use its exact algorithms on a variety of crops and marketplaces to do more research and make new products. The Plant-by-Plant™ AI program detects and treats each plant separately, spraying only the plants that need it with great accuracy. This invention promises farming that is safer, more efficient, and in line with tightening environmental rules. Find out how Ecorobotix's new ideas are changing the future of eco-friendly farming and encouraging people all over the world to use AI-powered farming tools.

Museum Heist Shocks: A team of robbers struck the Louvre on Sunday, making off with “priceless jewellery, according to France’s interior minister. Nine pieces were stolen, including jewels belonging to Emperor Napoleon. The thieves targeted the museum’s Apollon wing, home to the French crown jewels, during ongoing “renovation work”. They used a truck’s lift mechanism and an angle grinder to break in, shattering two display cases before fleeing on motor scooters. The entire heist lasted less than seven minutes. Some stolen jewelry was recovered nearby, but most remains missing. Authorities have temporarily closed the Louvre to visitors as the investigation unfolds. Known as the world’s most-visited museum, the Louvre attracts up to 30,000 daily visitors. This daring theft recalls the famous 1911 heist when the “Mona Lisa” disappeared. Discover more about this audacious crime and its impact on the art world.

Gene Editing Leap: Corteva and Profluent Bio have teamed up for a multi-year strategic partnership to improve gene editing technologies with the help of AI. This relationship brings together Corteva's expertise in agricultural sciences and its Genlytix™ ecosystem with Profluent's cutting-edge AI-driven protein design platform. The goal is to create the next generation of crops that are both sustainable and strong. Profluent brings its own foundation model, ProGen3, which was trained on more than 80 billion protein sequences. It also brings OpenCRISPR-1, the first genome editor made by AI in the world. They will work together to make new, precise gene-editing tools that will help crops grow better, fight pests, and deal with environmental challenges like heat and drought. This partnership aims to speed up crop engineering by using AI and generative biology, thanks to Corteva's investment and innovation platform, Catalyst. Tom Greene, Corteva's senior director and global leader for Catalyst, said that integrating Profluent's AI innovations with gene editing skills will give growers around the world reliable solutions that satisfy the growing demand for profitable and environmentally responsible farming. The move is a big step forward in agricultural biotechnology. Leap into Venture Beat to find our more.

Black and Orange?: They’re not just festive flair. They’re shorthand for Halloween’s story: orange for the autumn harvest and fire, black for darkness, death, and the year’s end. The palette traces back to Celtic Samhain rituals (bonfires, harvest rites) and later 19th–20th century American customs that cemented pumpkins and black-night imagery as the holiday’s signature look. Want the deep dive and historical sources? Read more here.

Scaling Smart: A major shift is underway in European AgTech that you will want to be locked in on. A game-changing development just landed, signaling that the era of fragmented innovation is being replaced by strategic scale-up—bridging startup ingenuity and farm-floor reality. What this means for you: faster roll-out of precision tools, stronger partnerships between tech providers and producers, and a surge in real-world deployments across Europe’s fields. The so-what? Your farm, your service offering, or your startup now has a clearer runway to deploy at scale—so being early, agile, and connected will pay off. Ready to see how this plays out and where the hotspots will be? Discover more on AgTech Navigator.

😆 Till You Laugh

Disclaimer

Follow