What the business is
Hong Kong agtech company selling sensor-driven automated irrigation and cultivation systems, plus its own farm produce for restaurants
The bet
Farmers will adopt AI irrigation if sensors cost a $10-20 monthly subscription instead of a capital purchase, letting the startup scale beyond Hong Kong
Starting capital
About $4.5 million raised in total (per TechCrunch)
How it started
CEO Ray Lok founded Full Nature Farms in 2019, after founding Evergreens Republic, a USDA-certified organic aquaponics farm. The company built its own controllers, software, LED grow lights, pipes and sensors, and sells them as a stack.
What happened
Rocket 1.0 had been under test in Hong Kong since January 2024. At CES 2025 the company launched Rocket 2.0, a standalone platform that combines sensors for crop yield, soil health and climate with AI and weather forecasts to schedule irrigation automatically. It also said it would look for 30 local partners at CES to test the product in North America.
What has to be true
Agriculture uses about 70% of global freshwater and traditional irrigation wastes water and nutrients
A subscription with no upfront cost lowers the barrier for farmers to try sensors
Selling the whole in-house stack (controllers, sensors, software) lets one vendor own the data loop
A CES Innovation Award in the Sustainability category gave a Hong Kong startup a US launch platform
What can be applied
For hardware aimed at farmers, a per-sensor monthly fee removes the upfront cost that usually blocks adoption, but the claimed savings stay unproven until pilots report.
Aftermath
As of 2025-01-06 the company had Rocket 1.0 in test in Hong Kong, 12 Hong Kong projects slated for Q1 2025, planned pilots in five more countries, and was recruiting 30 North American test partners. The 30% water-cost reduction is the company's own claim.
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