Kodama raises $7M to bring robotics to forestry

Kodama initially focused on wildfire risk reduction in the western U.S., but it is now focusing on the timber industry in the southeastern U.S. | The company said it will use the latest funding to support commercial deployments, deepen OEM partnerships, and continue development of supervised autonomy capabilities for complex off-road environments.

“Right now, we’re working with different forestry companies across the southeastern U.S,” Ben Pinfield, a go-to-market associate at Kodama, told The Robot Report. “Our system is really at a point where we’re able to sell it as a product, and we’re at a point where we’re scaling, trying to delve into new machines, and really focusing on the autonomy piece of forestry.” Kodama’s technology is already deployed in commercial logging operations across the southeastern U.S. Over the past six months, machines equipped with the company’s technology have moved more than 100,000 tons of timber across multiple states. “We’re focused on specifically plantation timber operations,” said Merritt Jenkins, co-founder and CEO of Kodama. “If we look more broadly, though, this is a tool for land management, and this is absolutely a tool that will be used in wildfire mitigation, from a forest thinning perspective, as well as wildfire suppression.” Including the latest funding, Kodama has raised a total of $14 million to date. Konvoy Ventures and Breakwater Ventures co-led the round. The round also included participation from Blue Forest Asset Management, NYA Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Dangerous Ventures, M1C Ventures, and BTG Pactual. The forestry industry faces tough conditions Forest contractors are facing a lot of challenges. Demand for timber, forest management, and wildfire-resilience work is rising, but each requires long hours at remote job sites. “If you’re a 20-something-year-old prospective logger thinking about entering the industry, you need to be on-site at 5:30 a.m., which means you’re usually leaving your home at like 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning,” Jenkins said. “Then, you’re in a machine for nine or 10 hours a day, driving over stumps and rocks and through ruts, beating up your body all day long. There are some loggers that we’ve spoken with who have gone through, for example, eight skidder operators in a year. It’s brutal turnover in this industry for this type of operator.” As fewer people go into the industry and more operators retire, it’s getting harder and harder to find experienced, reliable operators, and fewer people want to get into the industry. “For the heavy equipment operations, that [work] can be pretty rough on their bodies,” Pinfield said. “It’s like the bang just isn’t worth the buck as far as the physical trade-off for a lot of these operators.