The inaugural Startup World Cup Portland Regional ran yesterday afternoon at UpStart Collective. If you recall, this event was to choose a regional winner to advance to the Startup World Cup global finale in San Francisco, November 18–20, 2026, with a $1 million investment on the line. So who is making the trip south to compete in the big show…? Autonomous robotic greenhouse startup Canopii.
Portland, Oregon-based Canopii builds robotic greenhouses that can autonomously run the whole crop-growing process from seeding to harvest without human intervention. These greenhouses can produce up to 40,000 pounds of produce a year while requiring only one spigot of water and taking up the same space as a basketball court.
“Now, five years later, we have hit a major milestone [for] the farm,” cofounder and CEO David Ashton told TechCrunch. “We have an autonomous farm that grows everything from seed to harvest without any human intervention, and we did so with a very small team and very little capital, which I think is very different from what the rest of the industry had experienced.”
The inaugural Startup World Cup Portland Regional featured Lisa Stone (BrainTrust Fund), Josh Carter (Founder First Fund / Upstart Collective), Yalda Moshiri (OEN Angel Oregon), Tony Bash (MacArthur Companies), Chris Magaña (IMS Capital Management), and Dave Barcos (North Bank Innovations) as the judging panel.
For more on Canopii, visit canopii.us. For more on the finale, visit Startup World Cup.
[h/t Josh Carter]
