Precision agriculture robotics · Milpitas, California
Arvalase builds precision agriculture robots that pair AI vision with lasers. We start with laser weeding and extend to the orchard tasks that still depend on expensive hand labor: pruning and root sucker removal.
Where we start
Orchards and vineyards keep the tree row clear with herbicide strips, mowing and hand crews. Laser weeding is already proven on vegetable farms, where independent university trials have shown it controls common broadleaf weeds as well as herbicides do, without chemicals, and it is where Arvalase begins.
The largest labor line
Dormant pruning is the largest single labor cost in many orchards and vineyards: UC Davis cost studies put it at about $1,400 per acre in Central Coast apples and $1,900 per acre in San Joaquin Valley table grapes. Machines can pre-prune a hedge, but the selective cuts that shape a tree or vine are still made by hand, one plant at a time.
Still done by hand
Suckers are the shoots that sprout from a trunk or rootstock and draw growth away from the tree or vine, so crews cut them back by hand or knock them off with tractor-mounted whips, sometimes several times a season. In Napa wine grapes, UC Davis costs hand suckering at about $600 per acre, and on most vineyard acres it is still hand work.
Figures are from the UC Davis Cost and Return Studies: apples, Central Coast, 2023; table grapes, southern San Joaquin Valley, 2018; wine grapes, Napa County, 2020. Weeding trial results: Sosnoskie et al., 2025, Cornell and Rutgers field trials.
Arvalase is led by a Silicon Valley investor with years of experience running orchards in California, working with a small early team in the Bay Area.
Arvalase is incubated at the California Science and Technology University Startup Center.
CSTU Startup CenterWe are hiring research and analysis interns for fall 2026, with engineering roles to follow as the team grows.
Send a resume and a few lines on why to [email protected].