Posted On: Jul-2026 | Categories : Agriculture
The vertical strawberry grower says it has solved the unit-economics problem that brought down better-funded indoor farms. Robotics, lower prices and a premium crop will determine whether that claim holds.
Key Points
Oishii’s USD 150 million Series C indicates that investors have not abandoned indoor farming, even after venture funding collapsed and several highly valued operators entered bankruptcy or closed.
The company has avoided commodity lettuce and concentrated on premium strawberries, a crop that offers stronger pricing power but is considerably harder to pollinate, grow and harvest indoors.
Oishii is betting that harvesting robots, solar-supported production, new packaging and lower retail prices can turn indoor agriculture from an expensive technology experiment into a scalable produce business.
Oishii’s announcement on May 13 that it had raised the first USD 150 million close of a Series C financing round gave the Indoor Farming Market its strongest investment signal since a wave of bankruptcies and closures undermined confidence in the sector.
The round was led by SPARX Asset Management and included Nomura Real Estate Development, MISUMI Group and Mizuho Bank. It brought Oishii’s total financing since its founding in 2016 to USD 370 million. The company said the capital will be used to expand production, integrate more robotics, build farm infrastructure and develop new product formats in the United States and Japan.
That level of investment stands out in an industry where funding had almost disappeared.
U.S. venture investment in indoor farming reached USD 2.1 billion across 76 deals in 2021, according to PitchBook data cited by The Wall Street Journal. By June 2025, activity had fallen to just five deals totaling USD 57 million, after declining to USD 277 million during the previous year. Plenty and at least five other indoor-farming businesses had filed for bankruptcy.
Oishii raised more than twice that USD 57 million amount in a single transaction.
The deal does not mean investors are returning to the same model that defined the earlier vertical-farming boom. Oishii is not building multilevel warehouses to grow undifferentiated lettuce that must compete with field-grown produce. It is developing Japanese strawberry varieties, selling them under a consumer brand and automating one of agriculture’s most difficult manual jobs.
The investment is a bet that indoor farming can work when the crop is valuable enough, the product is differentiated and the technology directly lowers production costs.
Oishii’s lead products are the Omakase, Koyo and Nikko Berries, Japanese strawberry varieties grown throughout the year in pesticide-free controlled environments.
Strawberries are a demanding choice for indoor agriculture. Plants must be pollinated, monitored through a longer growing cycle and repeatedly harvested as individual berries reach maturity. The fruit bruises easily and has a limited shelf life. Small mistakes in humidity, airflow, temperature or picking can reduce the proportion of the crop that reaches retailers.
“When we chose strawberries, we knew we were selecting one of the hardest paths in indoor farming,” Oishii co-founder and CEO Hiroki Koga said when the Series C was announced.
The difficulty is also part of the commercial strategy.
Most indoor-farming companies that expanded during the previous investment cycle concentrated on leafy greens. Lettuce grows quickly, works well in stacked systems and requires less complicated harvesting than berries. But indoor lettuce competes with conventional farms and large greenhouse operations that use free sunlight, existing distribution networks and highly efficient production systems.
A strawberry has more room for differentiation. Flavor, sweetness, size, appearance and variety can create price differences that consumers already understand. Oishii is therefore selling a branded food product rather than asking shoppers to pay more primarily because the product was grown indoors.
The company introduced its Omakase Berry in 2018 at nearly USD 50 per tray. It has since added the Koyo and Nikko varieties, expanded its packaging options Indoor Farming and introduced products priced between USD 4.99 and USD 15. Its distribution reached 18 U.S. states before expanding into Toronto, its first international retail market.
That movement from luxury pricing toward regular grocery purchases is central to Oishii’s next stage.
The original Omakase Berry attracted attention from chefs, food media and affluent shoppers. It proved that an indoor-grown strawberry could command a substantial premium. It did not by itself prove that the company could build a large produce business.
The Koyo and Nikko ranges give Oishii more pack sizes, grades and price points. A consumer who will not regularly purchase a USD 50 tray may still buy a USD 7.99 package as a premium alternative to conventional strawberries.
Koga has said Oishii’s latest financing was possible because the company concentrated on proving unit economics before pursuing rapid revenue growth. He contrasted that approach with indoor farms that expanded leafy-green production before demonstrating a sustainable business model.
The Series C gives investors a chance to test that assertion. Oishii now has to preserve product quality and crop yields while increasing production and lowering the average price paid by consumers.
Oishii’s ability to scale may depend less on adding growing racks than on improving the robots working between them.
In March 2025, the company acquired the intellectual property, assets and part of the engineering team of Tortuga AgTech, a developer of robotic systems for harvesting strawberries and table grapes.
Tortuga had deployed approximately USD 50 million over eight years to develop agricultural robotics. Its commercial harvesting fleet included about 150 machines, along with artificial-intelligence models, robotic software and custom hardware designed to locate, assess and pick delicate fruit.
Oishii already operated around 50 robots at its Amatelas Farm in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. The machines detect strawberry ripeness before picking and gather production data that can be used to adjust light, temperature, humidity and airflow. The company said the combined technology could reduce harvesting expenses by 50%, although that remains an Oishii performance target rather than an independently verified commercial result.
Harvesting is one of the hardest agricultural activities to automate.
A strawberry-picking robot must identify ripe fruit that may be partially hidden behind leaves. It must position its gripper without striking nearby berries, apply enough force to remove the fruit and avoid bruising or dropping it.
A 2026 study of a robotic strawberry-harvesting system showed how far the technology has advanced and how much improvement is still required. During greenhouse trials involving 281 strawberries, the system recorded a 96.6% success rate in reaching the fruit, a 91.3% grasp-and-pull success rate and an overall harvesting success rate of 84.3%.
An 84.3% overall success rate is high enough to demonstrate technical progress, but not high enough to eliminate farm workers. Missed fruit, failed grasps and crop damage still require human intervention.
Oishii’s advantage may come from operating the robots within a highly controlled environment.
Outdoor harvesting robots must deal with rain, changing sunlight, uneven ground, wind and unpredictable plant growth. Oishii can design growing racks, lighting and plant spacing around the machines. Its farms can also produce repeated images and performance data under relatively consistent conditions, helping engineers refine detection and movement systems.
Amatelas Farm spans more than 237,500 square feet and is located beside a large solar field. The facility contains additional growing levels, a multimillion-dollar water-purification system and robotics that Oishii says analyze around 60 billion data points annually.
Those data are not valuable merely because the number is large. They can connect the condition of individual berries with temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, light and airflow during the crop cycle.
A farm that identifies which environmental combinations produce the best flavor, size and yield can refine later crops. A harvesting robot can also become a mobile inspection system, collecting information even when it does not pick the fruit.
Oishii strengthened that strategy again in March 2026 through a capital and business alliance with MISUMI Group, a Japanese supplier of mechanical components and factory-automation systems. MISUMI will supply components to Oishii and work with the company on research and development for agricultural automation.
The partnership addresses a less visible challenge in farm robotics: manufacturing.
Building several prototype robots is different from operating and maintaining a commercial fleet. Motors, grippers, rails, sensors and other mechanical parts must be standardized, replaced quickly and manufactured at consistent quality. MISUMI gives Oishii access to a larger industrial supply network as it attempts to move its machines beyond the development stage.
Robotics could eventually give the company two sources of advantage. The first is lower labor cost. The second is a production-data system that improves crop decisions over time.
Neither advantage is guaranteed. Machines must remain operational in humid farm conditions, and the cost of purchasing, maintaining and upgrading them must be lower than the labor expense they replace.
The optimism surrounding Oishii follows a difficult period for controlled-environment agriculture.
Investors poured almost USD 4 billion into large, energy-intensive indoor vertical farms during the five years preceding May 2025, according to The Washington Post. Several companies expanded rapidly on the expectation that automation, LED efficiency and local production would eventually bring costs down.
Those improvements did not arrive quickly enough.
Plenty filed for bankruptcy in March 2025 after it was unable to raise sufficient additional capital. The company stopped operating its Compton, California, facility, reduced its workforce and paused additional construction at its Virginia strawberry farm. It had previously attracted backing from investors including SoftBank, Walmart and prominent technology billionaires.
Bowery Farming ceased operations in 2024 after raising more than USD 700 million. AeroFarms and AppHarvest also entered bankruptcy proceedings.
The problem was not that the companies failed to grow crops indoors. It was that the crops often cost too much to produce.
Indoor farms require buildings, growing racks, irrigation systems, climate controls, software, sensors and lighting. The systems must operate continuously while competing against field farms that receive sunlight without paying for it.
Energy remains a particularly difficult cost. A Resource Innovation Institute study cited by The Washington Post found that five of 12 indoor farms examined used as much energy per square foot as a hospital.
The industry also had limited data on profitability. Companies published figures on water savings, yield per square foot and pesticide reductions, but generally disclosed little information about energy per kilogram, labor costs, crop losses or capital repayment.
Eric Stein, executive director of the Center of Excellence for Indoor Agriculture, told The Washington Post that limited data sharing prevented the industry from establishing benchmarks and learning collectively from failed operations.
Indoor farms achieved genuine technical advances during the investment boom. LED lights became more efficient. Sensors improved. Software gained greater control over growing conditions. Automation reduced some repetitive farm work.
But those technologies were frequently deployed inside expensive facilities growing commodity products. The farms could produce more lettuce from less land and still lose money on every package.
The Wall Street Journal reported that investors increasingly viewed indoor farms as hardware-intensive businesses that were harder to scale than software companies. Commodity crops grown under artificial light offered limited protection against conventional agricultural competition.
Oishii is attempting to avoid that trap by combining higher-value fruit with consumer branding.
The distinction matters because Oishii does not have to match the lowest-cost outdoor strawberry on the shelf. It has to keep the quality and price difference large enough to support its production costs, but small enough to attract repeat purchases.
The closest thing Oishii has to a commercial benchmark is the Nikko Berry.
Introduced in 2025, Nikko is described as the company’s most abundant and approachable strawberry variety. It is sold in larger packs and at lower prices than the original Omakase product.
In March 2026, Oishii introduced a stay-fresh top-seal package for Nikko that replaces the conventional plastic clamshell with a paperboard-based tray and sealed film. The company says the format uses 80% less plastic while improving shelf life and retail presentation.
The packaging development may be as important to retailers as the growing technology.
Strawberries are highly perishable. Fruit that arrives bruised, develops mold or loses quality before purchase becomes a direct cost for retailers. Longer shelf life can reduce markdowns, rejected deliveries and unsold inventory.
A larger, more affordable pack can also change how the product is used. Oishii’s early berries were positioned as individual luxury items. Nikko can be marketed for breakfast, baking, snacks and routine household consumption.
Oishii expanded its 2026 retail offering to six formats across three strawberry varieties. Premium-grade Koyo and Nikko packs were introduced at a suggested retail price of USD 7.99, giving the company products that compete within a broader premium-fruit price range.
That price remains above many conventional strawberries, but it is far removed from the USD 50 tray that established the brand.
The progression resembles the way many new consumer categories develop. An expensive flagship product proves differentiation and attracts attention. Production improvements then support larger volumes, additional formats and lower entry prices.
Oishii still needs to demonstrate that its cost reductions are keeping pace.
A lower retail price can expand demand while compressing the margin available to cover electricity, facility depreciation and robotics. If production costs do not fall quickly enough, wider distribution could increase revenue without strengthening profitability.
The Series C funding will allow Oishii to increase capacity before the company has publicly disclosed detailed operating margins. Investors are therefore relying partly on management’s claim that the economics have already been proven.
Oishii is not the only model emerging after the sector’s financing collapse.
Smaller indoor and vertical farms are expanding through municipal partnerships, grants, local food programs and modular equipment rather than large venture-capital rounds.
True Garden in Mesa, Arizona, uses diffused natural light to grow vegetables in vertical aeroponic towers. Founder Troy Albright told The Washington Post that the greenhouse produces around 15,000 pounds of leafy greens in one month and can continue operating when outdoor temperatures reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit.
Homer Farms operates an urban farm in Phoenix using revenue from produce sales, grants and local partnerships instead of venture capital. Eden Grow Systems sells smaller mobile growing units for food-security projects, including systems used on Ascension Island, where food shipments can arrive only once every three months.
These businesses are not direct competitors to Oishii. They show that indoor farming is separating into different commercial categories.
Community and regional farms may justify their costs through food security, water conservation, shorter supply routes and public funding. Oishii must justify its costs through premium products, national retail demand and automation.
The sector’s future is therefore unlikely to depend on one universal indoor-farming model. Natural-light greenhouses, modular urban farms and fully controlled premium-fruit facilities solve different problems.
Oishii has chosen the most technology-intensive path. Its investors are betting that the higher difficulty will create stronger barriers to competition.
The USD 150 million financing confirms that investors remain willing to back indoor agriculture when a company presents a more disciplined crop and technology strategy.
Oishii has several advantages that earlier operators lacked.
It grows a product with visible differentiation. It has moved beyond a single luxury package into multiple varieties and price points. Its strawberries are available across 18 U.S. states and Toronto. It owns advanced harvesting technology and operates a large farm supported partly by solar power. Industrial partners such as Yaskawa and MISUMI add automation and manufacturing capabilities.
The company also faces substantial risks.
Strawberries are harder to grow and harvest than leafy greens. Its robots must improve beyond current agricultural-harvesting benchmarks. Premium pricing must survive as the products become more widely available. New farms must reproduce the output and quality of Amatelas without requiring disproportionate capital.
The wider industry’s history also remains relevant. Plenty, Bowery and other indoor farms attracted respected investors, built sophisticated technology and secured large retail relationships before their financial models failed.
Oishii’s Series C is therefore not proof that the Indoor Farming Market has solved its profitability problem. It is evidence that investors believe one company may have found a better way to approach it.
The decisive measures will be less visible than the berries or robots. They include harvest cost per package, saleable yield, energy consumed per tray, crop losses, retail sell-through and the period required to recover the cost of each new farm.
Koga has said the company crossed the unit-economics threshold that stopped other vertical farms from raising capital. The next stage is proving that those economics remain intact when Oishii produces more fruit, sells it at lower prices and enters more markets.
The Indoor Farming Market does not need another company that can demonstrate remarkable technology inside one building. It needs a company that can reproduce the same economics across many of them.
Oishii’s USD 150 million raise is the strongest indication yet that investors believe it can. The farms, robots and grocery shelves will now have to deliver the evidence.