Kodama raises $7M for remote-operated forestry machines, bringing total funding to $14M

Machines retrofitted by Kodama Systems, which equips skidders that drag felled trees, moved more than 100,000 tons of timber across the southeastern United States in the past six months, the Sonora, California company said on Oct 19, announcing a $7 million round co-led by Konvoy Ventures and Breakwater Ventures. Blue Forest Asset Management, NYA Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Dangerous Ventures and M1C also joined, bringing total funding to $14 million. Kodama says the money goes to commercial deployments, equipment-maker partnerships and autonomy for off-road terrain.

The case rests on labor reliability more than autonomy. "The number one issue is labor reliability," CEO Merritt Jenkins said, according to AgFunderNews. Kodama combines supervised autonomy with teleoperation: machines handle repeatable tasks while experienced operators remotely manage complex work. Jenkins said a remotely operated skidder matches the per-hour productivity of a manually operated one, so the saving comes from loaded labor cost. Remote operators are paid similarly to in-cab operators, but workers' compensation is lower and they skip a 45-minute to two-hour daily one-way trip. Kodama is preparing to run machines 20 hours a day instead of 10. Jenkins said Kodama's big focus now is one operator running several machines, which he said would improve unit economics further.

Jenkins said Kodama is integrated with two of the three largest equipment manufacturers, and each day of remote operation produces about a terabyte of training data. Kodama sells robots-as-a-service. Contractors pay Kodama anywhere between a day rate and a month rate, and the diesel machines still need on-site crew to refuel and grease them.