Farmtech is getting good. There’s robots, self-driving tractors, drones, and super-sophisticated machines of all kinds. And, of course, there’s laser weeders that kill weeds with lasers, saving on herbicide costs and creating a healthier crop. Is laser weeding the future?
In 2021, I spoke with Carbon Robotics founder and CEO Paul Mikesell about a radical idea: killing weeds with lasers. At the time, the company had prototypes in the field, but no deliveries yet. Four years later, Carbon Robotics has shipped machines worldwide, launched a second-generation LaserWeeder, and added a new product, self-driving tractor tech for your existing machine called Carbon ATK , which lets farmers run tractors autonomously 24/7.
Here’s what’s new and why it matters for the future of agtech.
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The science of laser weeding
Laser weeding works by using AI-powered computer vision to distinguish between crops and weeds in real time. Instead of spraying chemicals across entire fields, Carbon’s system pinpoints the meristem — the growth cells of a weed — and burns it out with a laser.
“The key technological or biological insight … that makes the whole thing work is that if you target a laser effectively, which means accurately, right on the meristem, and you burn that out, you will kill the plant.” — Paul Mikesell
That’s why the LaserWeeder can kill weeds without damaging nearby crops, and why it has the potential to dramatically reduce or even eliminate herbicide use.
From Gen 1 to Gen 2: scaling up
Carbon Robotics launched the first commercial LaserWeeder in 2022. In 2025, the company introduced the LaserWeeder G2, a modular, more powerful second-generation system.
Key numbers:
- 24 lasers in a standard 20-foot machine (12 modules, 2 lasers each)
- 20–150 milliseconds to identify and destroy each weed
- 8,000–10,000 weeds per minute eliminated
- 3–4 acres per hour covered
“On the top end the G1 was about 5,000 weeds a minute. So I think we’re probably doing … much closer to about 8,000–10,000 weeds a minute at this point.” — Paul Mikesell
ROI is fast. Farmers see break-even in under three years, thanks to reduced herbicide costs, less manual labor, and higher yields.
“The yield improvements can be dramatic, in some cases up to 50% yield improvements.” — Paul Mikesell
The price of laser weeding precision: $1.4 million and up
Advanced agtech doesn’t come cheap, apparently.
A standard 20-foot LaserWeeder G2 costs about $1.4 million, and larger machines are more. But because farmers can co-own units or lease them across regions, the economics can still work, especially when paired with higher yields and organic certification.
There’s financial ROI to laser weeding, with yields up as much as 50% because farmers aren’t using herbicides (which by definition kill living things). There’s also health ROI: as Mikesell points out, farmers themselves benefit most from reduced herbicide exposure. A lifetime of high-intensity exposure of complex chemical weed killers is probably not the best thing for a long, healthy life.
“The people who get hurt by this the most are the farmers who have a lifetime of exposure to these chemicals.” — Paul Mikesell
The good news: Mikesell says most farmers have a 3-year return on investment.
That’s impressive.
Carbon ATK: autonomy for every farm
We also talked about Carbon Robotics’ newest product: Carbon ATK.
The LaserWeeder was originally self-driving, but practical and regulatory challenges led Carbon to sell it as a pull-behind implement. Now, the company has reintroduced autonomy as a retrofit for existing tractors: Carbon ATK.
Installable in less than a day — and reversible — Carbon ATK lets farmers run machines without drivers, 24/7 if desired. And it solves one of autonomy’s biggest hurdles: what happens when something goes wrong.
“If the tractor gets to a point where it doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do … it can be remotely taken over and controlled by one of our operators.” — Paul Mikesell
That’s made possible by Starlink satellite internet, which gives low-latency connectivity even in remote fields. Farmers get the best of both worlds: autonomy most of the time, and a remote intervention driver when needed.
This works for laser weeding, but also pretty much anything else you’d be using a tractor for on a farm.
Is laser weeding the future of farming?
With the LaserWeeder killing weeds at 10,000 per minute and the Carbon ATK running 24/7, Carbon Robotics is pushing farming toward higher productivity, lower chemical use, and healthier outcomes for both food and farmers.
“Anything that puts less chemicals on our ground, anything that costs less, anything that makes our crops better is better for the health of the country as a whole.” — Paul Mikesell
It’s hard to argue with that …