Monarch Tractor

Monarch Tractor is a Silicon Valley-based startup developing a fully electric and autonomous farming tractor. The company aims to create farming equipment that is both economically viable and sustainable. The company was founded in 2017 in stealth by Praveen Penmetsa, Carlo Mondavi, Mark Schwager and Zachary Omohundro. Praveen Penmetsa is the current CEO of Monarch Tractor. The company is headquartered in Livermore, CA and also has an office in Singapore. Testing and manufacturing of the product take place in California.

The company came out of stealth with the announcement of its $20,000,000 series A round of funding in March of 2021. The company raised $61,000,000 in their Series B round of funding announced November 17, 2021. In July 2021, Monarch Tractor announced its partnership with Hopville Farms in Oregon, funded by Conservation Innovation Grant. Monarch tractor has also received funding from the USDA through partnerships in California, Norway, and New Zealand.

The Monarch tractor is a fully electric machine with zero emissions that can act as a tractor, ATV, and generator in the field. It is capable of operating without a driver and utilizes autonomous hardware and software. In addition, the Monarch tractor is equipped with collision prevention, vision-based PTO safety, and 360-degree cameras. The tractor can collect 240GB of crop data every day, which it is used in the fields. The data collected can be used for real-time adjustments and long-term yield estimations.