ASVT Robotics receives $25 million to simplify use of industrial robots
25m Series Tiger Globalwiggersventurebeat – SVT Robotics, a provider of software to control robots in warehouses and factories, has received $25m in Series A funding led by Tiger Global with participation from Prologis Ventures, the company announced this morning. ASVT says it’ll use the new capital to strengthen its product research and development and expand its customer contacts.
Co-founder and CEO A.K. Schultz says SVT’s platform helps customers solve the growing “interoperability problem” in industrial automation. Therefore, he says that the industry is severely limited by its ability to implement. Integrations are typically custom-coded, resulting in long, complex development cycles. According to a recent article in Industry Today, the biggest concerns of manufacturers implementing automation include a lack of experienced workers to operate the machines, high switching costs and safety concerns.
According to Deloitte’s survey on the use of AI in manufacturing, 93% of companies believe AI will be a key technology to drive growth and innovation in the industry. But not every company is equipped to make the transition to automation.
To help, SVT offers pre-built integrations and functions programmed by its various automation partners. However, The customer selects the desired technologies, and SVT designs a robotics solution using drag-and-drop tools. Depending on the customer’s needs, the solution can be implemented on-site or in the cloud.
“It’s expensive, and companies wait up to a year or more to get a new automation solution up and running,” Schultz said. “Solving this problem with [the SVT platform] allows the market to realize its full potential.” I Got this information from venture beat about 25m Series Tiger Globalwiggersventurebeat.
Robotics Orchestration
The adoption of automation technologies, including robotics, accelerated during the pandemic. For example, American Eagle used robots to help sort garments in its warehouses to handle a rush of online orders. Meanwhile, startup Brain Corp reported that the use of robots to clean retail stores in the U.S. increased by 24% in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same phase in 2019.
Although SVT isn’t unrivalled in the industrial automation space, with more than $150 billion in revenue, the three-year-old startup claims that the use of its platform increased by 375% between the fourth quarter of 2020 and July 2021. Current customers include “top companies” in warehousing and manufacturing.
“In the absence of a plug-and-play integration solution for industrial robotics, warehouses and manufacturers haven’t been able to implement the automation quickly. They need to keep pace with the dramatic changes in labour dynamics we’ve seen over the past year,” Tiger Global partner Griffin Schroeder said in a press release. “With its [platform], SVT solves this critical interoperability problem.”
Tiger Global leads financial Infusion into Elementary for automated manufacturing inspection
Elementary, an AI machine vision company, has closed $30 million in Series B funding to continue developing its manufacturing quality and inspection tools.
We last featured the Pasadena-based company last June, when it raised $12.7 million in a funding round led by Threshold Ventures. Elementary’s tools enable customers to create no-code inspection routines and train models to inspect manufactured goods, parts and assemblies that could not previously be inspected manually, in a repeatable and scalable manner.
With the latest funding, Threshold is back, joining other existing investors including Fika Ventures, Fathom Capital, Riot VC and Toyota Ventures in a round led by Tiger Global. In total, the company has raised $47.5 million.
AI and Quality Platform for Manufacturing
“Elementary’s rapidly deployable hardware and machine vision software enable its use in modern factories,” Mo Islam, an Elementary board member and partner at Threshold Ventures, said via email. “I am excited to welcome Tiger Global as a new partner for the company as it expands its deployments across multiple customers in manufacturing, consumer products and logistics.”
Meanwhile, Arye Barnehama, the founder and CEO of Elementary, said via email that customer demand and market timing were the drivers for the company to seek new funding. He said that more than 250 million inspections have completed.
In the past year, the company has increased its Tier 1 enterprise customers 10-fold. At the same time, Elementary’s team doubled its headcount and added to its leadership ranks with the hiring of Milind Karnik as vice president of engineering; Monique Apter, vice president of sales; Krishna Gopalakrishnan, senior director of vision and platform; and Greg McEntyre, vice president of implementation.
Barnehama plans to use the new funding to expand Elementary’s customer base worldwide. He also plans to double the company’s headcount over the next year by adding engineering, sales, implementation and customer success teams. The company will also invest in technology development for additional AI testing capabilities, cloud analytics, and reporting.
“During the pandemic, manufacturing and logistics experienced significant labor shortages that began before the pandemic but became much more severe,” Barnehama said. “As companies continue to automate without relying on expensive and hard-to-find engineers, our business has grown because we can offer them AI solutions without code. We enable our customers to move quickly and easily toward Industry 4.0 cloud and quality/sustainability initiatives.”
Ambi Robotics Raises $26M Series A Funding Led by Tiger Global
With record numbers of warehouse workers needed to support the growth of e-commerce, global brands are looking to support automation to increase throughput and safety for warehouse workers. Ambi Robotics announced today that it has closed its Series A funding round of $26 million. The Emeryville, California-based company has developed artificial intelligence from simulation to reality to control highly flexible robots.
“Ambi Robotics combines cutting-edge AI technology with engaging user interfaces to transform the role of ‘item handlers’ into ‘robot handlers,'” said Jim Liefer, CEO of Ambi Robotics. “Our Series A funding will enable more companies to help their employees work harmoniously with robots.”
The new funding comes when the Emeryville, California-based company sees significant customer growth and expansions just five months after emerging from obscurity. Ambi Robotics said the funding will allow the company to grow its team. and operations to support rapid deployments throughout the U.S. supply chain.
In addition, the company said it will expand its product and customer service offerings as hundreds of warehouse employees across the country now work with its automated sortation systems.
Ambi Robotics is expanding in the United States.
Founded in 2018 under Ambidextrous, Ambi Robotics said its AI operating system. AmbiOS uses proprietary simulation-to-reality technology to control highly skilled robots. AmbiOS trains algorithms 10,000 times faster than competing solutions, the company claims. The company says that this enables customers to scale AI-driven systems quickly. And successfully sort a wide range of unique items from day one.
Ambi Robotics offers AmbiSort for commercial sortation and AmbiKit for robotic placement. Therefore, The company began installing systems in October 2020 ahead of the peak vacation shopping season to generate revenue from commercial deployments.
In addition, Ambi Robotics has announced plans to expand its fleet in the U.S. with global brands such as Pitney Bowes. According to the Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index released today. Parcel volume in the U.S. increased 37% year-over-year, reaching 20 billion units, up from 15 billion in 2019.
Pitney Bowes forecasts that U.S. parcel volume will be nearly dual by 2026, reaching 32 billion to 39 billion units annually.
Tiger Global Leads Round
A new investor, Tiger Global Management LLC, led Ambi Robotics’ Series A round. Existing investors, including Bow Capital, Vertex Ventures US and The House Fund participated.
“Ambi Robotics has quickly become at the forefront of AI robots for package sorting and e-commerce fulfillment,” said Griffin Schroeder, partner at Tiger Global. “The company is a market leader because of its strong team and technology, validated by a robust pipeline of customer growth. As it capitalizes on the vast supply chain and fast-growing logistics market.”
Tiger Global was founded in 2001 and is headquarter in New York. And offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangalore and Melbourne. Since 2003, the firm’s private equity arm has invested in technology companies. Including Locus Robotics, Facebook, LinkedIn, JD.com, Spotify, Peloton, Instacart, DoorDash and Waymo.
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