STIGA Group is a manufacturer of garden care equipment that develops and produces lawn mowers, garden tractors, robotic mowers, and battery-powered gardening solutions, increasingly focused on electrification, autonomy, and connected technologies.
Largely under your leadership, STIGA has evolved from a heritage manufacturing business into a technology-driven garden care company. Could you briefly walk us through that journey?
STIGA is almost 100 years old and started in Sweden as a manufacturing business focused on welding, metal stamping, and similar activities. It later channeled this industrial expertise into the garden machinery market. Over time, the company evolved into a powerhouse of outdoor innovation, famously pioneering the industry-first front mower STIGA Park in 1975, and eventually became part of what is now the STIGA Group.
When I joined in 2019, more than 90% of our revenue came from petrol-powered products. Since then, we have transformed the business around three major trends: electrification, autonomy, and digital connectivity. As a result, the battery, electric, and robot segments have experienced immense growth, expanding their combined market share to double-digit figures. Today, we manufacture our own batteries, hold 275 patents - representing a 216% increase in our portfolio holdings since 2019 - and use technologies such as LiDAR, ultrasonics, and AI-driven vision systems. That is a very long way from our origins.
Given the complexity of real-world gardens, what has been the most difficult challenge in developing autonomous solutions and physical AI?
The most difficult challenge is identifying the right problem to solve. Every customer has a different garden, different expectations, and different priorities. Some have flat, simple lawns, while others have slopes, trees, flower beds, or swimming pools. Understanding what consumers actually want and designing solutions for those very different environments is the biggest challenge.
For us, AI is about more than sensing the environment. The machine must understand its surroundings and make decisions. A robotic mower may encounter a toy, a person, or a tree and must decide whether to stop, slow down, change direction, or continue. At the same time, it must complete its task efficiently, conserve battery power, and maintain cutting quality.
Delivering high-quality decisions in complex environments required significant processing power, which was one of the first problems we focused on solving.
Can the insights from your work on autonomous gardening be applied to other industries?
Absolutely. If you look beyond the garden product itself and focus on the technology stack, it becomes highly transferable. We have developed navigation capabilities using multiple sensors, our own battery technology, battery management systems, drive motors, cutting motors, and vehicle management systems.
If you remove the cutting deck from one of our machines, what remains is effectively an autonomous vehicle. It could be used for deliveries, warehouse operations, airport logistics, or other applications requiring precise navigation. The system can navigate with high accuracy, process information from multiple sensors, and operate using STIGA batteries and motors. That is an area we are examining very closely.
Does that mean expanding into new industries is something STIGA is actively considering?
Yes. Our first priority is always to defend and strengthen our core garden business. It is a profitable and growing business operating in a market that is undergoing significant transformation.
Beyond that, our growth opportunities include new markets, new products, and new applications. We have recently launched a professional division, and we also see opportunities where our technology stack could be applied to autonomous utility or delivery vehicles and other adjacent sectors.
Could you tell us about your partnership with SiMa.ai and why edge AI was the preferred approach for you?
Having AI processing directly on the machine was a deliberate choice. Our customers often have large properties and complex environments, and our brand is built around delivering a high-quality user experience. Relying heavily on cloud-based processing introduces risks such as the unnecessarily increase of power consumption, latency and dependence on connectivity quality.
We selected SiMa.ai because it provides an exceptional combination of processing power and efficiency. Their solution delivers around 50 TOPS while consuming very little power, which is critical for battery-powered products. That allows us to combine advanced sensor fusion with strong future scalability while maintaining the efficiency required for autonomous garden equipment.
How have customers responded to autonomous machines, and how has that changed your relationship with them?
The response has been mixed, which is exactly what we expected. Many people genuinely enjoy gardening. They like driving a tractor, seeing the grass being cut, and experiencing the process. We believe there will always be a place for traditional ride-on products because some customers find that activity enjoyable.
At the same time, many consumers value the time savings. We spend a lot of time observing how people use, store, and maintain their tools. Those insights often reveal problems consumers do not even realize they have. For example, we developed a storage system that also charges handheld tools, reducing clutter and ensuring tools are always ready to use. In the same way, autonomous mowers allow customers to spend less time cutting grass and more time enjoying their gardens and socializing.
What are your priorities for the next 12 months, and what excites you most about the future of AI at STIGA?
Our technology strategy is proving successful. We are selling roughly twice as many robots as we sold last year, and independent market data shows that we are gaining share across most product categories. That gives us confidence that the technology stack we have built is working and creating a strong competitive position.
Looking ahead, the focus is on identifying new opportunities, whether through new products, new applications, or new markets. We already have the processing power we need for the foreseeable future, so the priority is not building a bigger brain. Instead, we want to help consumers and professional users better understand the capabilities of our technology. As awareness grows, customers will gain more value from our products, professional users will become more productive, and we will continue to grow.
