Naware founder Mark Boysen first tried killing weeds with drones and 200-watt lasers.
He was brainstorming ideas for a startup with some friends and thinking about how his family in North Dakota had lost three members to cancer, which they suspected might be related to chemicals in the groundwater. Finding a chemical-free way to kill weeds seemed like a solid option.
But the laser was a dead end. There is too much risk of starting a fire, he told TechCrunch in an interview. After much trial and error of prototyping ideas like cryogenics, the solution he settled on — which he demonstrated earlier this year at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 — is steam.
Boysen’s company has developed a system that uses computer vision to locate weeds in lawns and fields and golf courses and kill them with nothing but evaporated water. It can be attached to lawn mowers, tractors or even ATVs. Right now, Naware is flexible, and Boysen is clearly eager for his idea to spread quickly—like the weeds he’s trying to kill.
In a world of AI agents and billion-dollar software companies, Naware stands out as a classic garage startup story. Boysen said his team first tested using steam by ordering a “rinky dink” garment steamer from Amazon. After that, they ordered seven more.
“They’re not really industrial,” Boysen said. “And so there’s a lot of research that helps develop this, to get to the point of, ‘How can we make this efficient and make it repeatable so it can scale?'”
Developing the steamer technology has been a challenge, but the biggest may have been identifying the weeds, Boysen said. It’s proven that AI software can be trained to accurately recognize objects or patterns, but the “green-on-green” problem has been difficult, he said—especially since the software must identify weeds in real time while the rig roams over a lawn. (And yes, it uses an Nvidia GPU.)
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But he thinks they’ve gotten there. He said Naware targets turf care companies for sports fields and golf courses, and claims his company can save such customers “$100,000 to $250,000 in chemicals alone.”
In addition, he said customers will save money because they don’t have to pay for people whose only job is to spray these chemicals. Naware did paid pilots to test and pitch the product, but Boysen’s pitch has already attracted prospective partners, he said.
“We’re continuing strategic partnerships. We’re in talks with $5 billion equipment companies that are interested in our product. And we’re talking twice about it — I can’t say their names, but you’ll figure it out,” he laughed.
Success, Boysen said, will require three things: those partnerships, securing patents and funding. Boysen is bootstrapping Naware for now, but said he will open his first round of fundraising in the coming months.
“I have to come up with a round of funding that just crushes anyone else who’s trying to think about it,” he said. “I have to make the promise that I can kill weeds, and it’s effective. And we’re going to make it work. I’m not worried about that.”
