Growing a profit in the indoor-farming industry is no simple task.

In the past year, vertical-farming operations Glowfarms and Fifth Season shuttered, while some farms that remained, like Iron Ox and InFarm, conducted layoffs. Publicly traded farms like AppHarvest and Kalera both reported significant losses, with Kalera entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.

Most of these indoor farms specialize in leafy greens and herbs, but at Oishii, the name of the game is strawberries. The company, based out of Kearny, New Jersey, eschewed conventional wisdom and chose to focus on strawberries, which CEO and co-founder Hiroki Koga said has been critical to Oishii’s success.

Strawberries are considered challenging crops to grow indoors, according to David Ceaser, lead agronomist at Agritecture, an urban agriculture consulting firm, because the crop needs to be coaxed from its vegetative state into its reproductive stage. The cues a strawberry relies on to move between these stages in nature must be mimicked indoors.

Additionally, unlike leafy greens, strawberries rely on pollination to grow, requiring a viable bee operation to keep them pollinated.

Oishii opted to grow a type of strawberry from Japan that produces a lower yield than American strains, but, according to the company, has a stronger taste profile, which has been the preferred choice of some Michelin chefs despite its heftier price tag. (A package of six to eight berries clocks in at $14.99 at Fresh Direct.)

Ceaser told Tech Brew that Oishii occupies a unique position in the industry.

Keep reading here.—JM

Vandana Slatter represents Washington State’s 48th legislative district and introduced what could be one of the most consequential privacy bills in the country: The My Health, My Data Act, which was signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee last week.

Prior to working in politics, she worked as a clinical scientist at companies including Amgen and UCB and as a hospital pharmacist.

We spoke with Slatter about the bill last week before it was signed into law.

Keep reading here.—RB

Between Web3, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence, the retail world is committed to experimenting with emerging technologies.

Here are some of the industry’s most interesting, surprising, and notable retail experiments with emerging technology from April 2023.

Keep reading here.—MA

Stat: 45%. That’s the percentage of ChatGPT responses to patients graded as “empathetic” or “very empathetic,” according to a study from the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the Wall Street Journal reported. Just 4.6% of responses posted to r/AskDocs on Reddit by IRL physicians received the same grades.

Quote: “Look at how it was five years ago and how it is now. Take the difference and propagate it forwards. That’s scary.”—Geoffrey Hinton, to the New York Times, on advancements in AI technology. Hinton, dubbed “the Godfather of AI,” said he resigned from Google “so he can freely speak out about the risks of AI,” the Times reported

Read: Is the green revolution being held back by red tape? (CNET)

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Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Survey finds most Americans say no to use of AI in hiring process
• Coworking with Patrick Kulp
• How the AI arms race played out in tech giant earnings calls