Carbon Robotics: How Paul Mikesell Sold $10M of Laser Weeding Robots Before Building One

October 26, 2026

TL;DR: Carbon Robotics is a Seattle company that builds the LaserWeeder, a machine pulled behind a tractor that uses cameras and AI to find weeds and kill them with lasers, so farmers need fewer herbicides and less hand labor. It was founded in 2018 by Paul Mikesell, who earlier founded the storage company Isilon Systems and worked on AI at Uber. As he shared on the show, the company started with a $900K seed round, collected roughly $10M in pre-orders before the first production machine existed, and by mid-2024 was about to ship its 100th machine at around $1.5M each. Business Wire reported a $70M Series D led by BOND in October 2024 that brought total funding to $157M, and later coverage puts the total at about $177M. Mikesell told the story on The Product Market Fit Show. The episode aired in July 2024 (Season 3), so every figure he gave was as of then.

A note on sourcing. Anything labeled "as he shared on the show" comes from the interview and has not been independently confirmed. Funding and company figures labeled with a source and date were checked against press coverage in October 2026.

What does Carbon Robotics do?

Carbon Robotics builds laser weeding machines for farms. The LaserWeeder is pulled behind a regular tractor. Cameras and a neural network identify each plant in real time, and a laser targets the weeds while leaving the crop alone.

Weeds are not a side issue for farmers. They take water and fertilizer from the crop, crowd the field and make harvesting hard. Mikesell said farmers have had two main options. The first is herbicides, which he said carry health risks for the farmers most exposed to them, plus runoff and drift. The second is hand weeding crews, which he described as hard and sometimes dangerous work, often done by guest workers far from home.

The laser approach removes both. Mikesell also learned, with help from plant scientists at the University of Washington, why it works. The laser does not need to reach the root. It destroys the plant's growth tissue, the meristem, near the surface, and after that the plant cannot grow.

"That first laser that we were pushing around was killing weeds in the field." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

As of October 2026, AgFunderNews reported that Carbon Robotics machines are available in about 20 countries. Its 2024 coverage listed the US, Canada, the UK, several European countries and Australia.

Who founded Carbon Robotics?

Carbon Robotics was founded in 2018 by Paul Mikesell, who is the founder and CEO. His background is software and deep tech, as he described it on the show.

Isilon Systems. He founded the distributed file system company, wrote its first code and built the engineering team. As he shared on the show, Isilon had a $2.2 billion IPO in 2006.
Uber, from 2014. He first helped scale Uber's back-end systems, then spent his last 18 months to two years on neural nets and deep learning. He reported to the CTO.
Oculus Research in Seattle. He joined after the Facebook acquisition, when it was becoming Facebook Reality Labs. He liked VR but felt the hardware of the time was far from where he wanted it to go.

As he shared on the show, he has been at five startups and through four IPOs. He said his reason for joining a company has always been the same as his reason for founding one: he cared about the problem.

The farming idea started by accident. He was selling his airplane, and the buyer was an Idaho farmer named Shay Myers. They talked about farming for hours. Mikesell left with a list of 15 ideas, and weed control was at the top.

He also credits John May, who started as a mechanical engineer and was vice president of product at the time of the interview. The two of them pushed the first prototype around the field by hand.

How much has Carbon Robotics raised?

The figures below mix what Mikesell said on the show with press-verified numbers.

Seed: $900K. As he shared on the show, $400K came from Mikesell himself and $400K from Bolt, a hardware-focused early-stage fund. The goal was one prototype in a real field.
Series A: about $8.4M to $8.5M. As he shared on the show, he did not remember the exact figure. It paid for three quick generations of the laser weeder.
Series C, April 2023: $30M. Reported by Business Wire to scale the LaserWeeder platform.
NVentures investment, May 2024. NVIDIA's venture arm invested an undisclosed amount, per Business Wire.
Series D, October 2024: $70M, led by BOND, with NVentures, Anthos Capital, Fuse Venture Capital, Ignition Partners, Revolution, Sozo Ventures and Voyager Capital (Business Wire and AgFunderNews, October 2024). BOND general partner Mood Rowghani joined the board.
Series D-2, October 2025: about $20M, led by Giant Ventures, reported as funding a new, unannounced farm machine (trade press, October 2025).

Key stat: total funding was $157M after the Series D, per the company's October 2024 announcement. As of October 2026, GeekWire puts the total at about $177M.

Some data sites list higher totals, but they disagree with each other and I could not match them to a primary source, so they are left out. No valuation has been publicly confirmed, so none is given here.

For more on raising for physical products, see product-market fit for hardware startups.

How did Carbon Robotics find product-market fit before shipping?

For about two and a half years, Carbon Robotics did not try to sell. As he shared on the show, the team talked to about 10 new farmers a month, built a contact list and kept working on the product.

"And so the idea was, was not to start selling, it was really to figure out how to keep working on the product until we had something that we thought we could sell." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

The early machines were self-driving robots that Carbon built itself. They worked. But autonomy brought regulation, safety issues and edge cases that were not solved yet. John May argued that tying the laser to autonomy would hold the company back. Mikesell agreed.

"So what we did was we removed the autonomy, we, we made the laser weeder a thing that would fit, that would be pulled outta the back of a tractor. And then we just focused on laser weeding itself." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

As he shared on the show, they decided on the switch in 2021, and the first units came off the line in the middle of 2022. Mikesell said that if he had dismissed May's idea, the company would probably be dead or at least struggling.

Then came the move that gave the episode its title. Carbon sold the new tractor-pulled machine before it existed. Farmers paid a deposit to get on the order sheet and paid the rest at delivery. The team ran demos with the old self-driving robots to show the laser working, then sold the tractor version. By the time manufacturing started in 2022, they knew where the first 10 machines were going, which was about $10M in pre-orders, as he shared on the show.

"It was when we first started selling those machines, before we had built anything at all." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

That was his answer when asked when he knew Carbon had product-market fit. The team had already done the math on what the machine would cost to build and what it could sell for. Farmers paying for a concept proved the business.

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Key stat: as he shared on the show, Carbon was about six weeks from shipping its 100th LaserWeeder in July 2024, at about $1.5M per machine, and expected to cross $150M in total revenue soon after.

How did Carbon Robotics price a $1.5M machine?

Mikesell called pricing "more art and science." The price had to leave enough margin to fund the company, but farmers had to be able to justify it. His rule was a payback period.

"So we priced it for an ROI really, we, we focused on making sure that farmers would get their money back within three years on that investment." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

In other words, what a farmer saves on herbicide and hand labor over three years should equal the purchase price. That framing turns a multi-million-dollar machine into a capital decision farmers already know how to make. As of October 2026, AgFunderNews quoted Mikesell saying some banks now write operating leases for LaserWeeders.

What went wrong when Carbon started manufacturing?

The first production run was hard. Carbon worked with a contract manufacturer in Detroit, and Mikesell was blunt about it.

"And I will tell you that that was not clean at all. That was super messy. Nothing was right, everything was wrong." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

As he shared on the show, the parts were built wrong, the line was understaffed, and a supplier's chiller and AC units "basically none of those worked." Engineers lived on the factory floor for months, working long days to tear down and rebuild machines. His lesson: the parts that break are rarely the hard technology. It was not the optics or the GPUs. It was the chiller, cable routing and crimp connectors.

Cash was always tight too. Mikesell said hardware startups are always about three months from bankruptcy. What got Carbon through was a credible team, a clear story and the pre-orders, which showed investors that farmers would put money down.

What has happened at Carbon Robotics since the interview?

Several things are now on the public record.

Series D and D-2. The $70M Series D in October 2024 and the roughly $20M Series D-2 in October 2025, described above.
Revenue. AgFunderNews reported in October 2026 that the company passed the $100M revenue mark in the year to March 2026, based on Mikesell's comments at an August 2026 ag robotics conference. Mikesell also said the company aims to become public. On the show in 2024, he had guessed an IPO might come within a year or two. That had not happened as of October 2026.
Layoffs. In October 2026, Carbon confirmed to GeekWire and AgFunderNews that it cut staff across several departments in the US and abroad, citing "broader economic conditions." It did not say how many people were affected. A company spokesperson said it has 275 employees worldwide.
Product. The current model is the LaserWeeder G2, and the company says it is building a new, unannounced machine.

Key lessons from Paul Mikesell's playbook

1. Do not sell before you have the product you want to sell. Carbon spent years talking to farmers without pitching them, and saved the contacts for later. When the right product arrived, the list was ready. 2. Cut the part that is holding the core back. Autonomy was impressive, but laser weeding was the value. Separating them got a sellable machine out in about a year. 3. Pre-sell hardware with deposits. Roughly $10M in pre-orders proved demand and helped fundraising before a single production unit existed. Mikesell treats that moment as his product-market fit. 4. Price on the customer's payback. A three-year ROI rule made a $1.5M machine an easy budget conversation for farmers. 5. Make decisions scalable. Asked for his top advice, Mikesell said how decisions get made matters more than any single decision. The experts who know the area should have the authority.

"It's always been more important the way we make decisions than the actual decisions that we make." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

He added a fundraising note that applies well beyond hardware.

"And there are a lot of good ideas that never get funded. Not because there's something wrong with the idea, just because the founders never figured out how to tell the story appropriately." — Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics

Listen to the full interview: He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers, then closed $10M in pre-sales before shipping a single one.

FAQ: Carbon Robotics

Q: What is Carbon Robotics? A: Carbon Robotics is a Seattle company, founded in 2018, that makes the LaserWeeder. The machine is pulled behind a tractor and uses AI and cameras to find weeds and kill them with lasers. As of October 2026, it is available in about 20 countries.

Q: Who is the CEO of Carbon Robotics? A: Paul Mikesell is the founder and CEO. He previously founded Isilon Systems and worked on AI at Uber and on VR at Oculus Research.

Q: How much funding has Carbon Robotics raised? A: The company said total funding reached $157M after a $70M Series D led by BOND in October 2024. With a roughly $20M Series D-2 led by Giant Ventures in October 2025, GeekWire puts the total at about $177M as of October 2026.

Q: Who are Carbon Robotics' investors? A: Publicly named investors include BOND, NVentures (NVIDIA's venture arm), Anthos Capital, Fuse Venture Capital, Ignition Partners, Revolution, Sozo Ventures, Voyager Capital and Giant Ventures. As Mikesell shared on the show, the hardware fund Bolt backed the seed round.

Q: How much does a LaserWeeder cost? A: As Mikesell shared on the show in 2024, the machines sold for about $1.5M each, priced so a farmer would earn the cost back within three years.

Sources: Listen to the Full Founder Story

Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics — the Isilon founder who turned a chance conversation with an Idaho farmer into a laser weeding robot, pre-sold about $10M of machines before production, and built a company that passed $100M in revenue.