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Ambi Robotics, a developer of supply chain automation hardware, today announced $32 million in additional funding led by Tiger Global and Bow Capital, with participation from Ahren and logistics firm Pitney Bowes. Pitney Bowes is a strategic investor in Ambi, having recently signed a $23 million agreement with the company to deploy Ambi hardware at Pitney Bowes fulfillment centers in the US.
The new capital came in the form of a SAFE, or simple agreement, which gives investors the right to buy equity in the company in the future, allowing Ambi to delay negotiations on valuation and investment terms. CEO Jim Liefer said he will focus on deployment and installation of Ambi’s technology, expanding the company’s product portfolio and growing the engineering, customer support and operations teams.
“This additional funding was raised quickly from a ‘normal’ company update to our existing investors and partners,” Leffer told TechCrunch in an email interview. “It’s fueled our desire to further fuel and deploy our and future AI-powered parcel sorting systems categories… Just this year our team has more than doubled and we will continue to retain engineering and customer success talent, among others, to drive customer demand for robotic solutions in their operations.”
Ambi’s co-founders — including Ken Goldberg, chair of UC Berkeley’s industrial engineering and operations research department — discovered clever techniques years ago to train robots in simulations and transfer those lessons to the real world. Goldberg and Jeff Mahler, a former doctoral student, came across a system called Dex-Net in 2011. They started the company in 2019 with other scientists and engineers at UC Berkeley.
Dex-Net, short for Dexterity Network, is an AI system that trains on thousands of images of 3D models of objects. Using deep learning, the system scans the data and uses algorithms to figure out the best way to pick up items.
Ambi’s autonomous item sorting robot arms are extended to the warehouse floor. Image Credits: Ambi Robotics
Ambi’s robotics platform builds on this to automate processes primarily in logistics and fulfillment. The company says its products, which include robotic arms and software to operate them, can “learn” on the fly to pack millions of unique items with different packaging (such as boxes and envelopes).
Using “end effectors” such as suction cups, Ambi machines attach to workers and scan, insert and pack items sorted into mail bags. Software running in the background analyzes data on productivity, item width and weight, usage and more, and identifies “pick points” on items in cluttered areas such as conveyor belts, fingers and bins.
Customers prepay for Ambi Robotics components and then pay a monthly subscription fee for use of the software.
“The team at Ambi Robotics brings a new way of thinking about traditional problems,” Liefer said. “With advanced technology that can solve many real-world problems, the team [has] They decided to use their knowledge to guide the exploding ecommerce industry towards a sustainable supply chain, so the problem of sorting packages does not rest on the shoulders of our most valuable resource – people.
Liefer says Ambi’s current focus is on its latest robotics technology, the AmbiSort A-Series v3, which has a “soft-touch” finish and can handle both malleable and rigid materials. Ambi says warehouse associates can add more than 1,200 items sorted per hour per employee with three to four of these systems side-by-side.
Ambi competes with Covariant, Nomagic, Soft Robotics, Pickle, Hai Robotics, XYZ Robotics, and RightHand among others for a favorable investment climate in robotics. According to Crunchbase, more than $17 billion was invested in VC-backed robotics startups in 2021 – nearly tripling the investment by 2020. In April, Amazon announced that it would create a new $1 billion fund to support companies working in customer fulfillment, logistics and customer service. supply chain sectors. And in May, Walmart expanded its partnership with robotics startup Symbiotic to install the latter’s machines at all Walmart distribution centers in the US.
In the year As of 2019, the global warehouse automation market was worth about $15 billion, according to Statista. That number is expected to double over the next four years, with supply chain executives citing automation as one of their top three investment priorities in an Accenture survey — aside from workforce technology concerns.
Ambi, meanwhile, began generating commercial revenue in October 2020 by installing systems ahead of the peak holiday shopping season, according to Leifer. The company is currently installing 80 parcel distribution systems and supports more than 80 “full-stack” sorting systems at 15 sorting centers.
Greg Zegras, president of international e-commerce at Pitney Bowes, added in an emailed statement: “Ambi Robotics is an important part of Pitney Bowes’ innovation strategy to help improve service to our customers and efficiently grow our global ecommerce business. At Ambi Robotics, we see the same commitment to customer-driven innovation that has helped Pitney Bowes grow and win in the marketplace for more than 100 years. We look forward to continuing to work together to drive innovation in our global eCommerce hubs.
Berkeley-based Ambi, which recently moved into new headquarters, has raised $67 million to date and has more than 50 employees.
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