Saif Khawaja likes to joke that he “grew up in a sea-faring family.”

Growing up in Dubai, he would often go on fishing trips to the Red Sea with his father. Khawaja and his grandfather had matching sailor tattoos.

When he moved to the United States for college, he read “If Fish Could Scream,” an essay by vegan activist Peter Singer on how the plight of fish is often ignored because they don’t have the ability to produce sounds like cows and chickens. Indeed, one of the most common methods of harvesting wild fish – which is also considered one of the most inhumane methods – is to scoop them up en masse with nets and let them asphyxiate on board until they die. The process can take hours, and the end result is fish meat flooded with stress-related hormones and lactic acid, which in turn makes the fish deteriorate faster in shelf life and quality.

In 2021, Khawaja founded Shinkei Systems Corp., an El Segundo-based seafood robotics company to scale up fish harvesting that is more humane and still produces less stress in the animals. The company announced in June it raised a $22 million series A round co-led by El Segundo-based Interlagos and Founders Fund. A handful of new investors, including Santa Monica-based Mantis VC, participated in the round.

“Margins of fishing have been compressing because of the cost of extraction and gas prices going up, but fish prices have stayed the same,” Khawaja said. “We’re really focused on how we can draw out more value from the same amount of catch, and then that also prevents overfishing.”

A vertically integrated supply chain

The company is inspired by ike-jime, a Japanese practice that spikes the brain of the fish to kill it instantly. The process is more humane but has failed to gain traction with the fish industry at large – ike-jime requires deep expertise and doesn’t scale sufficiently.

Poseidon, Shinkei Systems’ refrigerator-size robot, sits on commercial fishing vessels to kill and process fish within seconds of harvesting them. Using artificial intelligence, the machine scans each body to know the species and the best way to quickly slaughter the animal. The blood is drained in a way similar to kosher and halal practices and then cooled. The company’s robotic system processes a few thousand pounds of fish every week.

Shinkei Systems provides its robot to fisheries for free and pays them a premium for the fish Poseidon catches. In 2024, the startup announced a fish company called Seremoni, which sells the fish it caught to retailers like Los Angeles’ Sushi Zo and grocery stores.

“By pairing their breakthrough harvesting technology with our cold-chain logistics, we’re able to ensure every delicately harvested fish arrives at peak freshness, preserving the integrity (of the fish),” said Yasuhiro Saito, head of innovation and investment of Shinkei Systems investor Yamato Holdings, in a statement.

The supply chain of fish harvesting is often siloed – fisheries catch fish, which then undergo a handling and processing stage which involves butchering, freezing, canning and packaging. It then hits various distribution points before being stocked in large grocery freezers or handled by a restaurant cook. However, Shinkei Systems uses a fully vertical approach to harvest, process and sell fish to restaurants and grocery stores.

“We know that when you do this technique and you handle it the right way through the supply chain, you have an order of magnitude improvement in the economic efficiency of trading the fish,” Khawaja said.

A neglected sector

When it comes to food tech, food production companies like Shinkei Systems are relatively neglected. The food tech industry as a whole raised $77.5 billion in the first quarter of 2025 according to PitchBook, around 7% of which went to production startups.

But the overlooked sector – which includes food waste and traceability, delivery methods, sustainable packaging and freshness control – may see more interest in the coming months as tariffs put a strain on the food supply chain, forcing the ecosystem to look for quality food that is cheaper to produce.

“We expect AI will have an incrementally transformative impact on the food industry as adoption among incumbents continues,” Alex Frederick, an emerging tech senior analyst at PitchBook, said in an analyst note. “While the technology will unlikely prove disruptive in the near term, the competitive advantages arising from quicker production times, reduced costs and waste, and improved customer experience will likely lead to continued strategic and financial investment opportunities.”

Right now, Seremoni fish is already price-competitive with higher-end grocery retailers like Whole Foods and is featured in a handful of Michelin-star restaurants.