Mineral

History

2024: Company Closure

In early July 2024, it became known that Alphabet Holding, the parent structure of Google, closed the Mineral startup for the development of agricultural robots with artificial intelligence. Some of the technology will be licensed to Driscoll's - a California supplier of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and other berries.

Mineral was formed in 2020 on the basis of the Alphabet X technology laboratory, a platform that gave rise to projects such as Google Glass smart glasses. In 2023, startup Mineral became an independent subsidiary of Alphabet. She created robotic buggies equipped with cameras and machine learning tools to collect data on crops, soil and the environment. You can use this information to optimize field processing, fertilization, etc.

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Business Insider

Mineral machines were used, in particular, to analyze soybean plantations in Illinois and strawberries in California. Driscoll's uses the startup's technology to predict crop volumes, allowing it to provide better estimates to customers and partners. However, according to Bloomberg, Alphabet management concluded that Mineral has no future as part of the holding. The start-up says its developments will be moved to the agricultural ecosystem to "maximize the effect of AI adoption." Driscoll's, meanwhile, regrets the closure of the Mineral project.

We were very disappointed that Alphabet holding decided to change its position. We did have a great partnership with the Mineral team and, from our point of view, they were only gaining momentum. And then suddenly the plans changed, "says Scott Komar, Driscoll's senior vice president of R&D.[1]

2020: Establishment of Mineral Agrotech Company

On October 14, 2020, X Development, owned by Alphabet, announced the opening of a new agrotech company. It is called Mineral, its activities will be focused on improving agriculture with the help of innovative technologies.

The new company Mineral has already unveiled its robotic buggy, which is designed to analyze crops. The buggy is powered by solar panels and autonomously crosses the field, examining the plants with a variety of cameras and sensors. Through the use of artificial intelligence and the processing of satellite, weather and soil data, buggies can identify patterns and problems with crops.

Google launched agrotech company Mineral

By combining data collected from the field, such as plant height, leaf and fruit size, with environmental factors such as soil health and weather conditions, Mineral's software tools can help breeders understand and predict how different plant varieties respond to the environment, explains Mineral.

The company also noted that mapping and visualizing plants in the field would help growers fix problems and care for individual plants, rather than, for example, processing entire fields. This approach will reduce both costs and negative environmental impacts.

Sustainability is central to the Mineral concept, and sustainability is key to the buggy concept. The idea of identifying plant problems is to enable farmers to better manage the use of fertilizers, chemicals and water, and to study cultivation methods that can restore soil fertility and increase yields. Buggy can also help provide information on plant varieties and their features, which will help farmers identify varieties that will be sustainable and productive amid climate change.

To feed the growing population of the planet, world agriculture will have to produce more food in the next 50 years than in the previous 10 thousand years - at a time when climate change is reducing the yield of our crops, says Mineral.

Mineral technology is already being used to study soybeans in Illinois and strawberries in California.^[2]

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