Award-winning food robotics company Soft Robotics Inc. announced that it has raised a $10M Series B extension, to further expand commercial operations to meet COVID-19 pandemic-fueled demand. The capital will also go towards the company's launch of its SoftAI powered robotic solutions. SoftAI layers 3D vision and artificial intelligence technologies on top of Soft Robotics' patented and proven, IP69K-rated, soft grasping to give industrial robots the hand-eye coordination of human beings. This unprecedented combination of robotic "hands," "eyes" and "brains" enables, for the first time ever, the automation of bulk picking processes (e.g. bin picking) in the food supply chain. The round was co-led by Material Impact, Scale Venture Partners, and Calibrate Ventures and brings Tyson Ventures, the venture capital arm of Tyson Foods into the syndicate. ABB Technology Ventures and Tekfen Ventures also participated to complete the round.
"Today's industrial robots are unable to deal with product variability or unstructured environments typically found across the labor challenged food supply chain in areas such as agriculture, food processing, and logistics," said Mark Chiappetta, COO at Soft Robotics. "With our revolutionary soft grasping, 3D perception, and AI technologies, Soft Robotics unlocks robotic automation by augmenting widely available industrial robots with true hand-eye coordination allowing them to perform tasks that traditionally could only be performed by human workers."