Upside Robotics

About Upside Robotics

Upside Robotics is a Waterloo, Ontario agtech company co-founded by CEO Jana Tian (ex-Unilever chemical engineer) and CTO Sam Dugan (Waterloo BASc ’22; mechatronics/robotics) that builds lightweight, AI-enabled autonomous robots for precise in-season fertilizer application on row crops, starting with corn. Its Maize Runner-class robots navigate between rows to deliver nutrients at the root zone using satellite imagery, yield maps and onboard sensing, aiming to cut fertilizer waste and soil compaction versus broadcast applications; the company reports more than 10,000 autonomous kilometres driven, over 100,000 litres of fertilizer applied across more than 1,300 acres, and a waitlist of hundreds of farms. Incubated at the University of Waterloo’s Velocity programme and offering Robotics-as-a-Service remote management, Upside raised a $7.5 million USD seed in February 2026 led by Plural, with Garage Capital, Entrepreneurs First and the founders of Clearpath Robotics, bringing total funding to more than $11 million to deepen Canadian partnerships and expand toward the U.S. Corn Belt. Sources: University of Waterloo / Velocity 12 Feb 2026; TechCrunch; upsiderobotics.com.