Chef Robotics targets high-volume, high-mix food assembly applications, one of the hardest problems to train AI for. | Source: Chef Robotics
Chef Robotics Inc., which has developed robotic systems for meal assembly, today announced that it has raised $43.1 million in Series A funding. The round includes $20.6 million in equity and $22.5 million in equipment financing debt.
The San Francisco-based company said the funding round will allow it to accelerate production deployments of its robotic systems, providing momentum for its “real-world AI data engine flywheel.” Chef Robotics credited this flywheel for the rapid growth in its rate of meal production. Since food is highly variable, the company requires high volumes of data over prolonged periods of time for optimal model performance.
The more data Chef collects in the field, the more its ChefOS embodied AI model performance improves, it said. This means that as more customers use its robotic systems, the company can more easily pull in customers. This expansion, in turn, creates more runtime in production, leading to more data from the field.
Chef Robotics also said the data flywheel allows it to manipulate new customers’ ingredients from the get-go. This further accelerates itss momentum.
“Robotics is really having a moment right now. The innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of embodied AI for robotics,” said Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics. “We believe we’re in the pole position to scale given all the real-world production training data we already have.”
Chef Robotics sees quick growth in an expanding market
“When we started Chef, we wanted to focus on the industry with the direst need for robotics,” Bhageria wrote in a blog post. “We realized the food industry is that. It’s the third-largest labor force in the U.S., and the only larger markets — retail salespeople and nursing/personal care aides — are not tractable today.”
The global robotic kitchen market will grow from $2.73 billion in 2023 to $5.94 billion by 2028 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR), predicted The Business Research Co. It attributed this growth to advances in artificial intelligence, integration with smart homes, and the rise of cloud-connected kitchens.
In addition, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the food industry has the highest labor shortage of any U.S. industry with 1.1 million unfilled jobs, a sign that people don’t want to work in food preparation or food service. This presents a huge opportunity for automation, said Chef Robotics.
The company chose to start with food production rather than restaurants to get enough data to train its systems, noted Bhageria.
Since it was founded in 2019, Chef Robotics has produced more than 44 million servings through robot deployments at leading brands such as Amy’s Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay, and Cafe Spice. The company claimed that it has handled almost 2,00=0 ingredients and produced more meals than all other existing food robotics startups combined.
The data that Chef Robotics collects on each meal assembled is critical to the company, as it relies on real-world production data to train its AI models. The company currently serves customers in the U.S. and Canada, and it plans to expand to the U.K. market in 2025.
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Inside the details of the round
Avataar Ventures led the equity round, which included investments from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, MFV Partners, Interwoven, HCVC, MaC Venture Capital, Red and Blue Ventures, Tau Partners, Siddhi Capital, and BOLD Capital Partners.
“AI in the physical world is happening right now with robotics. Food is one of the largest markets in the world,” said Mohan Kumar, founder and managing partner of Avataar Ventures. “Industrial AI is already winning, and food packaging automation is quietly transforming how we get our meals.”
The new funding brings Chef’s total capital raised to $65.6 million, which consists of $38.8 million in equity and $26.75 million in equipment financing, all with Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank.
Chef Robotics said it plans to use the latest funds to scale its go-to-market team and efforts. The company will also further invest in non-engineering functions such as sales and marketing to scale its deployments.
In addition, Chef will use its equipment financing debt to cover the financing of its robotic systems for robotics-as-a-service (RaaS). This saves the company‘s customers from having to put out capital expenditures (CapEx) upfront for their robots.
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