iUNU Acquires CropWalk
On Aug. 10, iUNU announced that it has acquired CropWalk, an integrated pest management (IPM) company founded in 2019.
iUNU is an agricultural machine vision company headquartered in Seattle, with satellite offices in California, Florida, and Toronto as well. Founded in 2013, the company leverages computer vision and machine learning to allow growers to better manage crop issues and optimize growth cycles. The company’s LUNA system focuses on identifying growing maladies before the crop is affected and promotes better accountability of growing practices through the workflow management application.
CropWalk was founded in 2019 by Charlie McKenzie and director of operations, Robert Shearer, and director of science, education, and strategic development, Ayana Stock.
In making the announcement, iUNU CEO Adam Greenberg said, “Rising consumer demand is accelerating the growth of the greenhouse industry, but the massive shortage of both growers and manual labor requires a scalable machine vision solution to further produce supply. Having a renowned agronomy team to assist in deploying state-of-the-art technology like LUNA will have a profound impact on our constantly improving capacity to help growers increase quality, yields, and profits. 65% of growers are above the age of 55, and the shortage of qualified people is hitting the fast growing industry hard. Something has to give, thus the future is centralized management of distributed facilities.”
CropWalk is well-known for how the company customizes a unique suite of services for operations of various kinds, offering risk assessments, IPM program development, training sessions, the online CropWalk Academy and more, including remote monitoring services, the capacity of which are now enhanced by iUNU’s LUNA system.
Charlie McKenzie, CEO of CropWalk, said, “We’ve always used remote monitoring technology to identify and mitigate conditions that foster plant pathogens. The mantra we live by at CropWalk is ‘Start Clean, Stay Clean.’ Working with the iUNU team and using LUNA, we can digitally walk a crop from anywhere at any time allowing our team to effectively prevent problems before they result in economic injury. Our clients want us around more often, with LUNA, we can be there all the time. It’s a win for growers, a win for CropWalk, and a win for iUNU.”
LUNA, iUNU’s chief product, is an AI tasked with connecting plants, facilities, and people through a single interface. LUNA runs on computers or mobile devices and turns commercial greenhouses into precise, predictable, demand-based manufacturers.
Services of both companies will still be available for clients independent of one another but will have expanded resources at their disposal.
iUNU’s acquisition of CropWalk helps both companies become more effective in their work toward an common goal: reducing the cost of nutrient-rich food reaching urban centers while helping growers thrive.
For more information, please visit www.iunu.com.
Video Library 
