Dominique Mégret

Dominique Mégret, CEO of Ecorobotix, on bringing honour back to farming, and why precision is the future of food

Fifty years ago, farmers like Ecorobotix CEO Dominique Mégret’s parents bent over sugar beet fields under the scorching sun, pulling weeds by hand for hours on end. Today, despite decades of mechanisation and technological progress, millions around the world still do the same back-breaking work – or broadcast spray chemical-based pesticides to weed their crops. Mégret has shepherded in a new sector in farming technology that proves the next fifty years will look very different.

Growing up on a farm in rural Brittany in France, he experienced the social toll that came from having to use pesticides in a community setting. Mégret recalled how his brother-in-law – a conscientious farmer trying to feed his community – began waiting until nightfall to spray his fields. “In addition to health-related concerns with chemical exposure, farmers suffer from social stigmatisation of neighbours, who regularly accuse them of being criminals for spraying pesticides,” Mégret explains. “It is very demoralising for farmers to have their integrity questioned, without any practicable weeding solution.”

These experiences from his childhood planted a seed in him to seek out a solution for farmers, neighbours, and consumers. For Mégret, this work is personal. “I really feel this is the mission of my life. It is my ikigai” – the Japanese concept of finding your purpose at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.

Mégret left the farm to study economics, then spent two decades as a technology investor, building Swisscom Ventures from the ground up into a €600 million fund with 90 portfolio companies. After completing his MBA at INSEAD and co-founding tech incubator Kick-Start Ventures in London, he developed a keen eye for companies operating at inflection points.

When he joined Ecorobotix’s board in 2022 and later became CEO in early 2024, he finally found himself in a position to bring a solution to farmers worldwide. At the helm of Ecorobotix, his farming roots and his technology expertise positioned him well to tackle one of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

Ecorobotix, founded in 2011 by Steve Tanner and Aurélien Demaurex, has pioneered what the industry now calls ultra-high precision farming for crop care. Their flagship product, the ARA sprayer, uses their proprietary Plant-by-Plant AI technology to distinguish and treat each individual plant in real time, with a spray footprint of just a few centimetres. The result is up to 95% reduction in chemical usage and up to 99% reduction in pollution entering the air, soil, and water.

“We’re building a new category,” Mégret notes. “Traditional farming has a dependency on inputs – pesticides and fertilisers – that get applied very inefficiently. With broadcast sprayers, you essentially spray everywhere, but depending on weed density, only one to 10% of that surface actually needs treatment. All the rest ends up as pollution.”

Beyond reduction in pollution, Mégret envisions a zero-residue food system where pesticides might still be used, but with such surgical precision that they never touch the actual crop consumers eat.

He draws a parallel to medical treatment. “If you use drugs for cancer treatment, it has side effects. But if you have very precise medicine and can apply it only to the sick cell, you don’t destroy the rest of the body. It’s the same for plants. You can apply treatment with extreme precision and have far fewer side effects.”

Onions treated with Ecorobotix’s precision technology grow up to 30% larger and mature two to three weeks faster when they’re not touched by pesticides. For farmers, this means reduced costs, increased yields, and faster return on investment. For consumers, it means cleaner food. For the planet, it means dramatically less pollution.

“Thanks to technology, we’re able to do very complex work – at a low cost and at scale – which usually only a highly-educated gardener would do on a very small surface with lots of care,” Mégret explains.

With more than 25 crop algorithms already deployed and new ones developed every month or two, the ARA has become the world’s most versatile ultra-high precision sprayer.

As CEO of a company doubling annually, Mégret constantly asks himself what pace the company can sustain for the next six to 12 months.

Ecorobotix hired 100 people last year. They’re bringing on another 150 over the next 12 months to reach 400 employees. This level of growth demands more than capital – it requires understanding the human limits of sustained high performance.

Mégret, an avid trail runner himself, frames the challenge through the lens of athletic endurance. “It’s like running a marathon. You need to understand the maximum pace you can expect from yourself, from others, and from the market. There’s a concept called VO2 max – an athlete’s maximum oxygen uptake capacity. As the coach, I need to bring the entire company running with me. It’s not just about my VO2 max. It’s about understanding the maximum for the group.”

The timing of that pace matters profoundly. “When the market is small and you’re a pioneer, competition doesn’t matter because there’s no real market yet,” Mégret explains. “But as soon as you prove the market and validate a new sector, the race starts. The one who can scale fastest wins.” With machines now deployed across more than 20 countries in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, the race is on.

Building on rapid growth and proven field results, Ecorobotix recently announced a $150 million fundraising milestone, combining their Series C ($45 million in 2024) and Series D ($105 million in 2025) rounds. Highland Europe led the Series D, joined by the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund and McWin Capital Partners. 

Mégret notes “We chose Highland Europe because of their track record in scaling European companies worldwide. They know how to support scale-ups in the European context with global ambitions.”

That global ambition addresses a profound agricultural reckoning as farmers face rising costs, labour shortages, and pressure to reduce inputs whilst still producing more food. “We need to increase food production by 70% in the next 25 years, according to the FAO. That’s 10 billion people with increased living standards. But we have a very limited area available – roughly one billion hectares. We’ve reached the limits of deforestation,” Mégret explains.

The mathematics are unforgiving. A forecasted demand for nearly double the food, but there’s no more land. The traditional solution – doubling pesticide and fertiliser inputs – creates a vicious cycle where more growth drives more negative side effects and exponentially higher costs. 

Ultra-high precision is foundational to making agriculture possible at the scale humanity requires. “The solution is to use inputs in a much smarter way, only where you need them. If you use them on 10% of your surface, you save 90% of your costs and dramatically reduce pollution.”

In November, Ecorobotix unveiled its latest innovations at Agritechnica in Hanover, Germany. The company’s new advancements take precision even further, new algorithms, new crops, new precision applications that enable compliance with increasingly strict regulations.

Fifty years ago, Mégret’s parents weeded fields by hand under the hot sun. Today, millions of agricultural workers still do the same gruelling labour, often at 40 degrees for 10 hours straight. But fifty years from now, if Mégret’s vision succeeds, AI-powered machines will handle the complex handwork that even skilled gardeners struggle to perform at scale. Farmers will produce twice the food on the same land with 95% fewer chemicals, whilst crops grow larger and faster without the toxic burden of broadcast spraying. Perhaps most importantly, farmers will no longer wait for darkness to tend their fields. They’ll stand firm in the dignity of their work.

For Mégret, the privilege lies in leading at precisely this inflection point. “We know this will replace the traditional crop care ecosystem. It’s only a matter of time until it gets deployed worldwide, and we’re leading the way. I take it as a personal mission to accomplish, more than as a job.”

Mégret has found his ikigai. He’s bringing honour back to farming – and helping ensure there’s enough food, and enough planet, for the 10 billion people who will call Earth home.