BCBusiness
With farms across five countries and robots flying off the line, the B.C. startup is positioning itself as a global agtech leader.
The global mushroom industry, projected to exceed $70 billion by 2030, is grappling with ongoing labour shortages and tight profit margins. In many Western countries, harvesting alone can make up as much as 50% of total production costs. The pressure is heightened by the crop’s fast growth—mushrooms can double in size within 24 hours—requiring farms to harvest daily, year-round.
That’s where Salmon Arm–based 4AG Robotics steps in. The agtech startup builds fully autonomous robots that can harvest, trim and pack mushrooms 24/7—reducing labour pressures and increasing consistency without requiring farms to overhaul existing infrastructure. The company has spent the last five and a half years focused solely on mushroom-picking technology, and according to CEO Sean O’Connor, its robots help the average farm save around 8.4 million kilograms of carbon dioxide annually. This week, the company announced it has raised $40 million in Series B funding to accelerate global expansion.
The funding round attracted a mix of agtech and impact investors, with European firms Astanor and Cibus Capital leading the charge. They were joined by returning backers like InBC, BDC’s Industrial Innovation Fund, Emmertech and the Jim Richardson Family Office as well as newcomers such as Voyager Capital—a roster that reflects both international confidence and continued local support. The round—which follows a $17.5 million Series A in 2023—brings total capital raised to $57.5 million.
4AG will use this influx to expand manufacturing in Salmon Arm, hire additional field service and customer success staff and fast-track next-generation features such as punnet packing, disease detection and AI-driven yield optimization.
“This funding helps us leap from a startup proving our product works to a scale-up manufacturer trying to keep pace with demand,” says O’Connor. “In just two and a half years, we’ve gone from asking farms to trial our technology to having deposits for over 40 additional robots. As one of the first companies to fully automate the human hand in produce harvesting, we’re ushering in a new era for mushroom farming.” The company is already feeling the momentum—its current production is sold out through the first quarter of 2026.
For British Columbia—especially smaller cities like Salmon Arm—the rise of 4AG Robotics signals the emergence of a new high-tech anchor in agriculture. Their local manufacturing footprint supports regional employment, while expansions in service and R&D create a broader ag-tech ecosystem. With advanced features in development and operational deployments underway in Canada, Ireland, Australia and soon the Netherlands and the U.S., 4AG exemplifies how local innovation can scale to meet global market needs.
“What sets us apart is we are not just a theoretical robotics project that works in a controlled lab environment—it’s the real-world experience and the system thinking that is critical to working with the complexity of real farm environments, and being able to deliver commercially successful automation into those environments” says chief operating officer Chris Payne.
By combining cutting-edge automation with real-world productivity demands, 4AG is meeting a critical industry need. In doing so, this homegrown B.C. startup is proving itself on the global stage—and showing that solutions born in Salmon Arm can reshape one of the fastest-growing sectors of agriculture.
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