Who needs venture capital? Martin DeVido, a developer who attended Anthropic’s recent developer day, says he funds his AI-fueled tomato-growing project with proceeds from a meme coin.
The Idahoan spent several months building an autonomous system controlled by Claude that grows tomatoes in Boise. He plants the seedlings, but then the AI system decides how much to water the plants based on soil moisture readings, leaf temperature, and a camera that monitors the plants. “Claude is completely in charge of a living organism,” DeVido told me on the sidelines of the Anthropic event in San Francisco.
While DeVido’s project is relatively small compared to the huge swaths of venture capital pouring into AI startups, the fact that he couldn’t farm without Claude or pay for it without crypto shows just how much non-traditional capital is fueling the vibe-coding token economy.
After Sol the Trophy Tomato gained a following on social media, fans created a meme coin that now has a market value of $1 million and is funding DeVido’s effort to build out an autonomous farming system controlled by AI that could be used to grow food at scale.
There’s plenty of money sloshing around in the ever-growing (tomato) pie.