Monarch Tractor this morning announced the delivery of its first MK-V unit. The "smart tractor" is electric and what the Bay Area-based company refers to as "driver optional" (terms like "autonomous" and "self-driving" come with their own unique baggage). We'll just refer to it as a "robot tractor" from here on. The system was unveiled a bit under two or so years ago. The timing was certainly right.

Monarch Tractor is an all-electric autonomous compact tractor, ideal for general agriculture use. Monarch Tractor signed a contract manufacturing agreement with Foxconn to produce the Monarch MK-V electric tractor and battery packs at the Foxconn Ohio manufacturing facility. Monarch co-founder and CEO Praveen Penmetsa worked in the automotive market early in his career, and is no stranger to the automotive supply chain in the midwest. The Foxconn Ohio facility is located near Lordstown in eastern Ohio and boasts approximately 6.2 million square foot campus of scalable production space. The facility produced General Motors vehicles for 50 years before selling the property to Lordstown Motors in 2019. Other notable clients of Foxconn at the facility include Apple and the electric truck company Lordstown Motors.

Monarch Tractor deployed the first production unit of its all-electric, autonomous tractor at Wente Vineyards. Electric tractor company Monarch Tractors closed a $61M Series B round, bringing the total amount of funding raised since its founding to $81 million. Monarch introduced the first production unit of its all-electric, compact tractor to the market on Earth Day 2021. The company has a deep and diverse executive leadership team that disrupted the agtech market when it emerged from stealth in December 2020. Unlike competitive solutions that seek single-purpose autonomous machines to help automate specific tasks on the farm, the Monarch footprint is immediately familiar to every small and medium-sized farmer in the world.