A tech CFO’s next act: bringing AI to farmers

Kevan Krysler has reached two milestones many finance professionals would envy. He made partner at KPMG and then pivoted to industry, first as chief accounting officer of VMware, and then as CFO of a public company: Everpure (formerly Pure Storage). But he hasn’t stopped there. In March, Krysler was named CFO of Carbon Robotics, an ag-tech startup whose investors include Nvidia NVentures.

Founded in 2018 by Uber and Meta alumnus Paul Mikesell, Carbon Robotics topped $100 million in annual revenue for its fiscal year ending January 31, 2026. It’s raised more than $185 million in venture capital and employs around 260 people. The LaserWeeder, its signature product, uses AI to identify weeds which it then zaps with, yes, lasers. Though they sound like something out of Star Trek, LaserWeeders are actively being used today by hundreds of customers in about 15 countries.

Krysler—who even has weeding experience, having grown up on a farm in British Columbia—spoke with CFO Brew about why he chose to spend the next act of his career in the nascent field of AI in agriculture.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Going from a big public company to a startup that combines AI and hardware seems like a risky move. How did you evaluate Carbon Robotics, and what made you think “This technology has legs?”

The first thing is that for me, it starts with the CEO and founder [Mikesell], who has incredibly high credibility in terms of what he’s done.

What’s kind of amazing about physical AI in robotics…you don’t see a lot of companies at this point, with commercial models that seem very viable, that you can actually get pretty comfortable with. And when you’ve got $100 million in sales that you’re driving, you’ve proven a product-market need and fit, and from a reliability standpoint, it’s been proven out with farmers and growers.

What are farmers like as customers?

I think farmers are generally more conservative in nature…which goes to show how significant a pain point this is for growers…The input costs are continuing to increase for them across the board, whether that’s labor, fuel costs, fertilizer, seed, it’s just amazing in terms of what they have to absorb on the input cost side. Then on the output cost side, you have very little control on those commodity costs…And so it’s very compelling when you look at farmers taking a bet on a piece of equipment that’s got an incredible amount of intelligence in it that’s very different from what they’ve ever seen.

What are some of the challenges in combining AI with physical hardware?

Especially in agriculture, it’s got to work for the grower and the farmer, and it’s got to work with their current practices. And you’re basically taking a set of technology and putting it out in the field. And so one of your bigger challenges is making sure that this technology can absorb field conditions.

What are your goals for the company in your first year as CFO?

The most important goal for me is helping to accelerate the good momentum that Carbon is [having]. It’s important, from the psychology of a grower, that they think about the LaserWeeder robot as a viable alternative to what they’re using, which is herbicide and hand weeding. The big challenge now is getting conventional farmers to understand the economic ROI and that they are actually making more money by not only saving costs in terms of weeding, but also the yield productivity…Penetrating the conventional market at scale is a significant priority.

The second exciting opportunity is around ATK, which is our autonomous tractor solution, and we’re getting some really good momentum on that…Probably my second priority is scaling that ATK solution.

Are there lessons you took from the previous seasons of your career that you’re applying now?

The first is you always come into organizations, especially startups, and appreciate what they’ve done and how they got there, and understand how to build off of that….Continuing to be curious, I think that is a critical component for every leader, and then aligning that curiosity, once you are comfortable with the data and the facts that are coming in with experiences, you know, whether that’s scale on manufacturing and how to kind of move forward in optimizing the manufacturing process, or where do we want to go allocate our capital, specific to new initiatives and projects.