Artificial Intelligence Designed for Cannabis

Eteros Technologies USA, Inc., a global leader in cannabis harvesting equipment, recently acquired Bloom Automation, creating the first agricultural technology (Ag-tech) company focused on the post-harvest cannabis market. 

Founded in Canada in 2016, Eteros Technologies is now the premier manufacturer of cannabis automation equipment globally. As the parent company of the Triminator and Mobius brands, Eteros seeks to provide post-harvest processing solutions for all levels of cannabis production. The acquisition of Bloom strengthens Eteros’ ability to deliver on that goal by bringing computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) to cannabis producers.  

Tapping Into The Potential of Cannabis and Ag-Tech

Although Ag-tech has been one of the fastest-growing sectors in conventional farming and is expected to top 15.3 billion in 2025, Ag-tech in cannabis is still in its infancy. Eteros hopes to change this with the acquisition of Bloom. 

“As competitive as the cannabis market is today, this is only expected to increase as the market matures. In cannabis, there are so many areas where producers use manual labor because they need human intelligence,” said Aaron McKellar, CEO of Eteros. “At Eteros, we see a tremendous opportunity to implement Bloom AI into harvest automation to gain a competitive advantage. By combining Bloom’s technology with Mobius, we can equip operators with a powerful new data set to help them make better decisions and enhance their level of automation.” 

This Ag-tech integration comes at a critical time for cannabis cultivators facing price reductions of up to 62% in mature markets like Colorado. These price reductions are forcing cultivators nationwide to evaluate their harvesting methods. Although many of the processes have been mechanized previously, Eteros believes that integrating Bloom technology, which uses a sensor array and AI-driven algorithms to collect data, will improve the precision, accuracy and efficiency of existing automation. 

Additionally, the technology will enable an entirely new wave of processing capabilities, including defoliation, harvest weight predictions, pathogen identification and foliage density assessment, which was one of the main drivers for the acquisition. 

“Our mission has always been to bring AI and robotics to all areas of the cannabis industry. By joining Eteros, we can seamlessly create intelligent automation across a broad ecosystem of new and existing products,” said Jon Gowa, the CEO of Bloom.

With a shared vision for empowering cannabis farmers with actionable data, Eteros and Bloom expect to quickly begin offering turn-key AI automation across a broad spectrum of applications.