Kodama raises $7M to scale supervised forestry robotics in Southeast

Kodama Systems said it has raised $7 million to bring physical AI to forestry. The funding will support commercial deployments, deeper OEM partnerships, and continued development of supervised autonomy for complex off-road environments.

Kodama initially targeted wildfire-risk reduction in the western U.S. It now focuses on the timber industry in the southeastern U.S.

Including the new round, Kodama has raised $14 million to date. Konvoy Ventures and Breakwater Ventures co-led the financing.

Blue Forest Asset Management, NYA Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Dangerous Ventures, M1C Ventures, and BTG Pactual also participated.

Ben Pinfield, a go-to-market associate at Kodama, told The Robot Report that the company is working with forestry companies across the southeastern U.S. He said the system is mature enough to sell as a product.

Pinfield added that Kodama is scaling, exploring new machine types, and concentrating on autonomy for forestry.

Kodama’s technology has been deployed in commercial logging operations across the southeastern U.S. In the past six months, equipped machines have moved more than 100,000 tons of timber.

Merritt Jenkins, co-founder and CEO, said Kodama focuses on plantation timber. He added that the tool also supports land management, including forest thinning for wildfire mitigation and suppression.

Forest contractors face difficult conditions. Demand for timber, forest management, and wildfire-resilience work is rising, but the jobs require long hours at remote sites.

That strains the labor pool and makes it harder to keep machines productive and crews staffed.