For nearly a decade, the indoor agriculture sector has been hamstrung by a persistent dilemma: scaling vertical farms required reinventing the wheel at every new location, burying growers under massive capital expenditures, bespoke engineering costs, and unpredictable unit economics.
With the launch of its new Open Innovation Center in Hamura, Tokyo, indoor strawberry pioneer Oishii is shifting the strategy from one-off farm development to industrial-scale replication. By tapping into Japan’s manufacturing and robotics ecosystem — alongside cross-industry partnerships targeting everything from optical pest control to voltage-controlled refrigeration — the company aims to standardize its hardware, slash unit economics, and create a repeatable blueprint for scaling high-value produce globally.
“Our farms in the U.S. were largely built in-house, combining off-the-shelf equipment with technologies and systems we developed ourselves,” says Hiroki Koga, co-founder and CEO of the Jersey City, N.J.-based Oishii. “Early on, that gave us the flexibility to innovate from farm to farm, learn from each iteration, and continuously improve the technology. But it also meant that each new facility required a significant amount of custom engineering.”
The innovation center opening follows the first close of Oishii’s $150 million Series C in May 2026 and puts another piece of the company’s planned expansion across the U.S. and Japan into operation. Oishii chose Hamura as home for the innovation center to leverage Japan’s deep-rooted expertise in manufacturing, robotics and agriculture.
“Over the last nine years, our technology has matured,” says Koga. “We’ve built something that works, and we’ve continued to make it more reliable and cost-effective.”
Koga says the Open Innovation Center allows Oishii to accelerate that process.
“We’ve already developed technology specifically for vertical farming; the opportunity in Hamura is to further refine, standardize and industrialize those systems so they can be deployed more efficiently.
“Ultimately, that changes the unit economics of scaling,” Koga continues. “We’re moving from learning how to build a farm every time to replicating something we know works. That should allow us to bring future farms online faster, more reliably and at a lower cost across different markets.”
Cross-Disciplinary R&D in Action
The facility also gives Oishii and its partners a shared environment to connect expertise across disciplines, apply it to vertical farming research and tackle indoor agriculture’s toughest challenges.
That collaborative vision is already playing out through Oishii’s partnership with telecom giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, which is deploying optical pest control and voltage-controlled refrigeration to elevate crop quality.
“Our work with NTT is focused on understanding how technologies developed outside of traditional agriculture can be applied to indoor farming,” says Koga. “For example, optical approaches to pest and disease control could give us another tool for continuing to maintain our pesticide-free growing environment, while voltage-controlled refrigeration has the potential to help extend the freshness and quality of our strawberries.”
Koga says, if successfully implemented at scale, technologies like these could improve the precision and efficiency of Oishii’s operations while helping it maintain the quality that has been central to its berries from the start.
Targeting Japan’s Premium Market
As Oishii expands its work in Japan, the company is also preparing for its first commercial launch in the market, with sales expected to begin by the end of 2026.
Entering this new market presents a unique set of consumer expectations, as Japanese consumers hold strawberries and luxury fruit to an exacting standard.
“Japan has a deep appreciation for high-quality strawberries and already sets an incredibly high standard for the fruit,” says Koga. “What we believe is different about Oishii is our ability to deliver that same level of quality consistently, 365 days a year.
“In Japan, the exceptionally high standards for strawberries can make sourcing premium berries during the off-season challenging, so there are periods when consumers have very limited access,” Koga explains. “Given how prized strawberries are in Japan, we believe being able to enjoy exceptional berries year-round could be a real revolution — and a dream for many consumers.”
Balancing proven technology with local insights will be central to how the company approaches its commercial debut.
“As we prepare for our first commercial launch, we’re bringing the experience we’ve developed operating our farms in the U.S., while also paying close attention to Japanese consumers and learning from the market firsthand,” he says. “Our focus will remain consistent: delivering exceptional quality, flavor and freshness, with the consistency and year-round availability that our technology makes possible.”
Beyond the Berry
While Oishii has become a category leader in high-end strawberries, the Open Innovation Center will also serve as a testing ground to explore cultivation technologies for new varieties of fruits and vegetables.
“Strawberries remain at the center of our work today, but we’re actively exploring how the technology and expertise we’ve developed can translate to other high-value crops, including tomatoes,” says Koga. “The Open Innovation Center gives us a dedicated environment to test different varieties and understand what each crop requires to achieve the quality, flavor and production efficiency we’ve developed with strawberries.”
Moving beyond berries, however, isn’t about rapid expansion for its own sake.
“We’re taking a disciplined approach: identifying crops where controlled-environment agriculture can deliver a meaningful advantage, then developing the cultivation technology needed to make them commercially viable,” he says. “As that work progresses, we’ll have a clearer view of which crops have the strongest potential for indoor production at scale.”
Smart Scaling
For indoor ag companies, scaling physical space without standardizing core technologies can be a quick path to failure — a path Oishii strategically aims to avoid with its new Open Innovation Center.
“I think one of the biggest traps is treating scaling as simply a matter of building larger farms,” says Koga. “In reality scaling indoor agriculture requires continued advances across cultivation, automation, robotics, infrastructure and data-driven systems.”
Koga says Oishii’s experience over the past decade has shown the indoor grower that these areas are deeply interconnected.
“The Open Innovation Center gives us a dedicated environment to bring together expertise from agriculture, manufacturing, robotics and emerging technologies and apply those learnings to the way we build and operate our farms,” he says. “The goal is to develop solutions that are repeatable and scalable rather than solving the same problems independently with every new facility. That approach will be important as we expand across the U.S. and Japan.”
