Guardian Agriculture, a Woburn, Mass.-based startup developing large drones for aerial spraying, recently shut down after failing to secure additional funding. The company ceased operations in late August 2025 following a round of layoffs earlier in the summer.
Founded in 2017, Guardian Agriculture captured the attention of the agtech and robotics sectors with its SC1, a fully autonomous quadcopter designed for crop spraying. The SC1 weighed roughly 600 lb. (272.1 kg), could carry up to 200 lb. (90.7 kg) of fertilizer or pesticides, and was capable of covering 60 acres per hour, the company said.
Equipped with four 80-in. (203.2 cm) propellers, a 20-gal. (75.7 L) tank, and an 18-ft. (5.4 m) spray boom, the drone was described by one source as being “about the size of a small SUV.”
In April 2023, Guardian announced the SC1 received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate its aircraft nationwide. At the time, the company said this made the SC1 the first commercially authorized electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) system in the U.S.
Despite the technical ambition, Guardian struggled to commercialize its technology. According to a source familiar with the business, the company had just one paying customer at the time of shutdown. MIT News recently said Guardian had built eight units of the SC1 as of June 2025, which were delivering payloads over California farms in trials with paying customers.
The Robot Report obtained an internal email that Guardian Agriculture CEO Ashley Ferguson sent to employees on Aug. 22 to announce the shutdown:
“It is with ultimate sadness that I relay the following news. We don’t have enough cash on hand to bring folks back to work next week (or cover benefits going forward). We also don’t have enough cash commitments from investors today for an advance to extend folks so we have to make the tough decision to wind down the team and Guardian, effective today.”
“[We] are executing on liquidation and exploring $$ opps from insiders to go through the proper wind down (including potential acquirers), but unfortunately it doesn’t help our cash problem today.”
Guardian Agriculture’s SC1 drone. | Credit: Guardian Agriculture
The Robot Report reached out to Fall Line Capital, which is managing the wind-down process, but did not hear back. According to Crunchbase, Guardian Agriculture raised $51.7 million over five rounds of funding. This included a $20 million Series A that Fall Line Capital led in mid-2023.
Guardian Agriculture’s SC1 had earned industry recognition during its development. The drone was named one of Time magazine’s Best Inventions of 2024 and was featured among The Robot Report’s top picks from the World Ag Expo 2023.
The company’s closure underscores the challenges of scaling agricultural robotics hardware, where high research and development costs, long adoption cycles, and limited early revenue often constrain even well-regarded startups.
In other ag robotics news, 4AG Robotics recently raised $29 million for mushroom harvesting robots. TRIC Robotics, which focuses on autonomous pest and plant disease control, raised $5.5 million in seed funding. And Beewise recently closed a $50 million Series D funding round for its AI-powered BeeHome, which continuously monitor and assess hive health.
Late last month, John Deere acquired GUSS Automation, a developer of crop autonomy based in Kingsburg, Calif. The companies established a joint venture in 2022 and are now taking that commitment a step further.
Editor’s note: RoboBusiness 2025, which will be on Oct. 15 and 16 in Santa Clara, Calif., will feature tracks on field robotics, design and development, enabling technologies, business, physical AI, and humanoids. Registration is now open.
Certainly startups are risky!! I have been employed by two of them that took-off but did not survive long enough, and a third one that did not fail, but also did not take off. The one that came closest to lasting was killed by the investors who decided that while it did make an adequate net profit, that they wanted a much faster cash flow: Get load of parts in on a Monday and ship a load of product on Friday, along with the invoices. That was what they wanted. AND get rid of the engineers, they cost too much! So they did not make nearly as much . THAT was the “SUN Industrial Systems Division.” Killed by impatient investors.