Friday, July 24, 2020
Sensei Ag, Backed By Larry Ellison, Launches AgTech Efforts
A new, Santa Monica-based startup, Sensei Ag, which was founded by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and Dr. David Agus, founding director of USC's Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine, said on Thursday that it has launched to tackle food growing, indoor farming, and other agtech efforts. The new company was split off from Sensei Holdings, the combined leisure and agriculture company run by Ellison on the Hawaiian island of Lana'i. Ellison owns nearly all of Lana'i, which he purchased in 2014 for approximately $300M. According to Sensei Ag, the leisure division of Ellison's holdings will run separately as Sensei Retreats. The company said that it is developing "innovative, agile growing systems" that can dramatically increase farm productivity. The company says it is currently piloting its technology at Sensi Farms Lana'i, with the capacity to produce over a million pounds of food per year on less than an acre of space, using 90% less water than traditional farming; the company intends to eventually expand that effort to six greenhouses each 20,000 square feet in size.