How a semiconductor veteran turned over a century of horticultural wisdom into AI-led competitive advantage For decades, a ritual played out across ScottsMiracle-Gro’s media facilities. Every few weeks, workers walked acres of towering compost and wood chip piles with nothing more than measuring sticks. They wrapped rulers around each mound, estimated height, and did what company President Nate Baxter now describes as “sixth-grade geometry to figure out volume.”Today, drones glide over those same plants with mechanical precision. Vision systems calculate volumes in real time. The move from measuring sticks to artificial intelligence signals more than efficiency. It is the visible proof of one of corporate America’s most unlikely technology stories.The AI revolution finds an unexpected leaderEnterprise AI has been led by predictable players. Software companies with cloud-native architectures. Financial services firms with vast data lakes. Retailers with rich digital touchpoints. Consumer packaged goods companies that handle physical products like fertilizer and soil were not expected to lead.Yet ScottsMiracle-Gro has realized more than half of a targeted $150 million in supply chain savings. It reports a 90 percent improvement in customer service response times. Its predictive models enable weekly reallocation of marketing resources across regional markets.A Silicon Valley veteran bets on soil scienceBaxter’s path to ScottsMiracle-Gro (SMG) reads like a calculated pivot, not a corporate rescue. After two decades in semiconductor manufacturing at Intel and Tokyo Electron, he knew how to apply advanced technology to complex operations.“I sort of initially said, ‘Why would I do this? I’m running a tech company. It’s an indus …
