The lesson of Larry Ellison’s misadventures in farming

In Brief Larry Ellison’s leap into farming with his company, Sensei Farms, serves up a classic reminder: being a genius in one arena doesn’t mean success in another. As the WSJ reports, the Oracle co-founder set out to reinvent agriculture on Hawaii’s Lāna‘i Island, which he scooped up for $300 million back in 2012. Eight years and more than $500 million later, the project is still floundering. Ellison dreamed of AI-powered greenhouses and robot harvesters feeding the world sustainably. Instead, Sensei has been tripped up by tech snarls — like Wi-Fi issues and solar panels battered by Lanai’s winds — and rookie mistakes. Think greenhouses designed for Israel’s desert climate, when Lāna‘i is typically muggy. The company also mixed mature and baby plants together, a blueprint for a pest paradise. Sensei, co-founded by a medical doctor and led currently by a tech exec who runs Sensei from Boston, has had small wins, reports the WSJ. Its lettuce and cherry tomatoes now appear at the isl ... Read full article.