John Deere takes on Silicon Valley

John Deere, the Moline, Ill. farm-machine company, may seem like a surprising presence near the office towers of software giants like Salesforce and LinkedIn. And even though its new lab in the startup-heavy South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco is focused on technologies like artificial intelligence and automation, some devoted customers can’t stay away. “We have had people knocking on the glass trying to buy tractors,” said Alex Purdy, head of John Deere Labs. “I actually had someone the other day who tried to come in to replace something on his mower. People don’t necessarily think about Deere as the software development shop for agriculture.”Deere’s San Francisco outpost opened in May, and in September the company made its first big move to beef it up, agreeing to pay $305 million to buy Blue River Technology, a Sunnyvale, Calif., startup developing farm equipment using computers and robotics to automatically detect every single plant on a farm. Some of Blue River’s employees will join the San Francisco lab. The move by 180-year-old Deere is the latest sign of agricultural giants’ focus on automation and robotics. For example, in August, DuPont bought Granular Inc., a San Francisco agriculture analytics software firm, for $300 million. Meanwhile, Deere competitor Kubota Tractor Corp. opened a new research and development facility earlier this year in its Grapevine, Texas, headquarters.