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Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) is moving on from Mineral, an agricultural artificial intelligence company incubated in the mega tech firm’s moonshot factory called X, according to a report by Bloomberg on Wednesday.
Mineral developed AI-powered robots that scan farmers’ fields, providing them insights into crop yields and provide produce forecasts. However, after graduating from the X lab to a subsidiary of Alphabet, the company has struggled to sustain profits.
“We are transferring our technology out to the agriculture ecosystem to maximize the impact of bringing our AI to agriculture,” Mineral wrote in a memo obtained by Bloomberg. “Mineral will no longer be an Alphabet company, and our technology will live on inside of leading agribusinesses where they can have maximum impact.”
Mineral will apparently license some of its technology to berry producer Driscoll, Bloomberg reported.
However, Google will continue to fund other moonshots in its X factory, as it is reportedly raising $500M to invest in further spinouts that will become subsidiaries of Alphabet.
X lab startups that graduated into subsidiaries include Waymo, a self-driving car project, and Verily, a pharma and health care company.
One of the companies currently incubating in X include Taara, a company looking to transform online connectivity by using beams of light to send high-speed, high-capacity data. Another is Tapestry, which is working to create a clean energy grid. Meanwhile, Tidal attempts to help maintain sustainable fish populations in the world’s oceans.