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Larry Ellison’s $500M Hydroponic Dream: Sensai Farms’ High-Tech Failures · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and we've had some podcasts about famous people
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  involved in hydroponics.
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  We've had Kimball Musk, who is the brother of Elon Musk, and we've talked about
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  Zooey Deschanel, the actress from That Girl, I think it's called.
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  They've all got hydroponic companies. But today, I'm going to talk about the
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  second richest man in the world.
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  Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, the computer company, the technology company,
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  is worth $320 billion and has invested half a billion dollars in Sensai Farms,
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  which was started in 2018.
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  He started it to grow crops on a Hawaiian island he owns, one of the biggest Hawaiian islands.
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  It was formerly owned by the Dole Pineapple Company,
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  and they farm pineapples in hawaii because there's no
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  hummingbirds in fact it's illegal to import
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  hummingbirds into hawaii so they produce sweet pineapples
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  that because they're not pollinated however the soil is degraded by the continuous
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  growth of hawaiian pineapples for centuries and so the the soil really isn't
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  suitable for growing many types of crops now as well as his greenhouses He also
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  owns a third of all houses, two hotels,
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  the wastewater treatment, the park, the water treatment facility,
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  and the airline, or he did own the airline, going into this island.
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  So he's really trying to set up a utopian society on this island in Hawaii.
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  Now, he sets up Sensai Farms with David Agus, I think. He's an oncologist.
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  So neither of them are a plant scientist.
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  And yeah, you can see where this is heading. So yeah, you get an oncologist
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  and a tech bro together, and they believe that they can save the world.
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  And how are they going to save the world? What's this unique selling point going
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  to be about this hydroponic facility?
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  Well, obviously, it's going to be data and AI.
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  And to be fair to them, this is before AI became massive.
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  So they grew they set up six greenhouses and
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  they were going to have robots for harvesting and ai
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  wasn't just going to grow the crops ai was going to actually breed the
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  crops and so yeah make
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  make of that what you will he was also going to set up an organic winery
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  that doesn't really square with hydroponics but yeah an
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  organic winery grapes in hawaii not heard
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  of that one before a tennis academy i wonder if it's going to be lawn
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  tennis be interested in that a desalination plant and
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  a film studio and a health academy and
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  all sorts of crazy things like that so yeah
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  it was a big dream and one of the it ran into a number of different problems
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  so in february 2025 a lot of these problems came out in a wall street journal
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  article some journalists doing some good things for once exposing some issues in horticulture.
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  So they thought that it would take $12 million to build the greenhouses.
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  It actually ended up costing $50 million, which is a big overspend,
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  but nothing compared to the sort of overspends that the British government have
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  on things like building a railway or a bridge.
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  So big overspend there. They got an Israeli firm to build the greenhouses, interestingly.
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  And the Unrecommended by Larry's good
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  friend benjamin netanyahu and they the
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  israeli firm built the greenhouses but the roofs kept
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  up falling off because they weren't designed for the strong winds and they
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  weren't designed for the high humidity and so
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  they had to be completely redesigned and they were running into
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  a lot of problems the other thing a lot of the facilities had
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  at sensei farms is they had solar panels now larry
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  sat on the board of tesla and
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  so they had tesla solar panels apparently and but
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  apparently these didn't work very well and so they had
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  to be reinstalled and they had to rely on
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  diesel generators as well because a lot of the dust from the
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  volcanic dust from the volcanoes would cover the solar panels so that's not
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  good the AI didn't work and that's what it's reported and certainly weren't
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  using AI to breed crops and then there was the issue that the robots were not functioning,
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  so it was all hand harvested, which increases costs.
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  And so the cost came to $50 a kilo for lettuce, even in Hawaii.
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  And you might think everyone in Hawaii is rich. And yes, there are rich tourists,
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  but a lot of the native populations, the Polynesians and things like this, they can't afford that.
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  And then the whistleblower said that Larry himself, Larry Ellison,
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  would get involved and change what crops they were going to grow.
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  And so suddenly he would announce that they're going to grow watermelons, square
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  watermelons for $100 because he's seen them in japan well
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  if you listen to my podcast before i've been to japan and they don't actually
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  grow square watermelons anymore cubes or anything like that it was
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  a good news story but when you actually go to the farms you'll find
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  that they don't grow them because they would just get covered in mildew and
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  other diseases he'd one one day
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  he turned up and said they were all going to grow mangoes and the
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  plant physiologists and agronomists had to tell them
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  that no that would involve a complete redesign of the
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  greenhouse then he would say right now my japanese restaurant
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  nobu in my restaurant in my hotels need wasabi
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  and then the chefs would have to say no actually we prefer
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  can we just get some lettuce and tomatoes because
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  that's what we're struggling to get hold of and they're staples so larry would
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  get in the way and think that he was a better grower than the the growers apparently
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  and so that ran into issues they even got tony blair around to eat some tomatoes
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  and he off larry offered some tomatoes apparently and then the growers had to say,
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  well, actually, no, Larry, that's how Blair speaks, isn't it,
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  in that really weird way.
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  No, they're covered in pesticides at the moment, so they can't be eaten.
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  So unfortunately, Tony Blair didn't eat any.
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  Not to be held back by any of these issues, Sensai Farms also opened facilities
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  in Canada, in Vancouver, Ontario,
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  because one of their stated aims was to feed the whole of Hawaii,
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  then feed the whole of the world and employ two out of every five people in the world.
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  So very small goals there on the vision board of Larry Ellison and his friends. So.
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  Yeah they didn't quite get there and the vancouver facility
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  was sold and the ontario one apparently struggled both of
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  them struggled because they were commercial cannabis
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  facilities and there was a big boom in cannabis you know
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  around 2022 in canada and
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  then a lot of them went out of business so they were they bought the greenhouses and
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  tried to grow fresh produce to import into
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  usa however they were set up
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  for cannabis they weren't set up for fresh produce production so let's
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  be gutted and refitted that was expensive and then
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  only a few supermarkets are stocking it in the
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  us and obviously with tariffs and
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  trade wars with trump then that's going
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  to be a an issue with importing
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  fresh produce in from canada and it
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  the bad blood between canada and the usa
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  is not looking like it's going to simmer down
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  anytime soon because the big issue with the
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  ronald reagan advert i saw the other day so yeah that
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  was an issue so it looking like it's it's
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  not a good investment of half a billion dollars at
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  the moment however larry's probably not that bothered because in the first seven
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  months of 2025 his net worth increased by half a billion dollars sorry his net
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  worth increased by a hundred billion dollars so he could buy 200 of these failed
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  companies for that and invest.
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  And so what does he care? He is well on his way to being one of these trillionaires
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  and he rules the people on this island by having virtually a monopoly on all
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  of the facilities apparently.
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  But even after spending half a billion on the facility, it still was run a bit like a.
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  Sort of goes to show that tech bros think that they are
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  the experts at everything and if you just throw ai
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  at something it will work and so many
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  times in agriculture that has proven not to be the case and so
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  many companies have gone by the wayside in in
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  agriculture and horticulture that involved ai and tech bros can solve nice solutions
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  and problems on a computer but when it comes to living things they struggle
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  now they sensai farms is pivoting they no longer state that they want to feed
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  the world what they're going to do is allow other facilities to drum roll please,
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  license their technology how many times
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  have we seen this companies set up as hydroponic
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  facilities they realize there's not much money in growing a lettuce where the
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  margin is one penny and and so they decide they're going to try and license
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  the technology we've seen it so many times here in the uk and in the us and
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  other places and it's like the inevitability of the high investment.
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  Hydroponics let's build something let's 3d printer facility
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  let's get some proprietary technology in
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  the in the software and then let's try and sell that and you know and that's
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  normally i don't think this is going to go bankrupt because it's got larry behind
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  it but it's normally one of the last um things that companies say before they
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  do go bust but hopefully they can turn it around sensei farms,
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  There's not much else agricultural on the island.
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  So for the sake of the population, I hope they can continue to produce the two
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  crops that they are producing, which is lettuce and cherry tomatoes,
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  good source of nutraceuticals, vitamins and minerals.
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  And yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Sensai Farms,
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  not to be confused with Sensai Seeds, which is a cannabis seed company.
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  If you're into legal cannabis, let me know your thoughts.
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  Have you ever visited this farm and facility? i've never
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  been to hawaii if you have and you've seen any other hydroponic facilities
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  that are working well are there some smaller scale hydroponic facilities that
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  are working well in hawaii let me know that's been
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  hydroponics daily for today hope you've enjoyed it if you have and you're listening
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• 10:26
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• 10:29
  we don't have investors from the city of london or wall street but we do have
• 10:33
  amazing technology that gets things that shouldn't go into solution into solution
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  things like tricontinol salicylic acid what else do we do we've got ferric phosphate for slug,
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  solution that shouldn't go into solution anyway i'm babbling until next time
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  thank you very much for listening and goodbye.