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Fetch Robotics Wins $20 Million Slug Of Funding Led By Softbank

This article is more than 8 years old.

One of the most prominent robotics companies that hasn't yet been bought by Google just got a new round of funding.

Fetch Robotics, led by CEO Melonee Wise, one of the leading young figures in robotics, today announced a $20 million Series A round led by SB Group US, a unit of Japan's Softbank . Also joining in the round, which brings total funding of the company to $23 million, are current investors Shasta Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

In April, the San Jose-based company announced a pair of robots in April that are intended to help automate warehouses and fulfillment centers. Fetch's Freight robot works with human pickers in a warehouse as they gather products to be shipped, following them carefully much like a faithful dog. Workers toss product into bins Freight carries, and when they're full, it goes off to a shipping area and another can be summoned. The one-armed Fetch potentially replaces the human picker, at least for many kinds of objects, and can work with Freight for more autonomous operation of a warehouse. Each can return to a charging base automatically.

The 18-person company plans to use the money across the board, from sales and marketing to manufacturing to software development. "We're hiring like crazy," says Wise.

Indeed, that's her key job right now. The funding comes in the midst of a recent explosion of interest in robots of all kinds. In the past couple of years, Google has bought at least eight robotics companies in a concerted effort to stake a claim on the field, which is benefiting from a combination of cheaper sensors, more adept software, and other factors. That presents a distinct challenge to startups such as Fetch, which have to compete with Google and other companies for talent.

The round may not sound like much in a business where it has been routine to raise $50 million or more to get to a working robot. But Fetch is focusing especially on reducing the cost of its robots, which are in pilots with several large companies the company won't name. No pricing has been announced yet.

Wise has helped gather a large roster of talent already, including Chief Technology Officer Michael Ferguson, lead systems engineer Derek King, and lead mechanical engineer Eric Diehr. Many of them worked at Willow Garage, a seminal robotics incubator in Menlo Park, Calif., that spawned a number of robotics company before it was mostly wound down in 2014 by founder and early Google architect Scott Hassan. At Willow, Wise and others developed the Robot Operating System, a sort of Windows for robots.

Fetch's backers said they think the time is right for robots to take off in a number of fields. "The team, the robots, and the timing all lead us to Fetch Robotics and we are happy to join them in bringing Fetch and Freight to market," SB Group Managing Director Kabir Misra said in a statement. Softbank has also made a big bet on domestic robots, announcing on June 18 a $236 million investment from Alibaba Group Holding and Foxconn Technology Group to start selling its Pepper domestic robot this week.

Likewise, board member Rob Coneybeer of Shasta Ventures said in an interview that hardware in general is entering a renaissance where it's easier to build prototypes than can rapidly go into production. "Fetch has a chance to create the backbone of autonomous robots," he said.

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