Formant brings in $21M to expand enterprise focus

Formant, a company that offers a robotics data and operations platform, brought in $21 million in funding. The round comes after a year of record growth for the company, during which Formant increased revenue by more than 500% year-over-year. 

BMW i Ventures led the investment round, which also included participation from new investors Intel Capital, GS Futures. The round also included previous investors SignalFire, Hillsven, Pelion Ventures, Holman, Ericsson, Goodyear Ventures, PICUS Capital, and Thursday Ventures.

“Autonomous robotic systems have broken free from R&D departments and are now being deployed at scale to drive business outcomes and resilient operations,” Kasper Sage, Managing Partner at BMW i Ventures, said. “Their proliferation across mission-critical functions as well as support tasks for humans in various industries underscores the urgent need for seamless data management and orchestration across robotic endpoints. Formant is the operating system underpinning the future of the automated enterprise.”

Much of Formant’s recent growth has come from blue-chip enterprises like Blue River Technology, a subsidiary of John Deere, and BP. It has also come from leaders in the robotics industry like Burro, Scythe, and Knightscope. 

In the last year, Formant has also expanded its focus to enterprise customers, taking advantage of the accelerating adoption of intelligent robots across large organizations. Formant’s secure data platform can operate fleets of robots at any scale through a single pane of glass. 

“Formant is uniquely positioned to meet the business objectives and technical requirements of large enterprise companies operating at global scale looking to expand their robotics footprint,” Jeff Linnell, CEO and Founder of Formant, said. “Our platform now powers tens of thousands of production robots around the world across dozens of different industries.”

The company’s growth has been supported by its recent product introductions and integrations, which include enterprise-grade tools and account management features to empower enterprise customers. Earlier this year, Formant launched Theopolis, an AI language interface that enables non-technical users to interact directly with robot data and build visualizations inside Formant. 

“In the ever-evolving landscape of robotics and AI integration, Formant stands ready to take center stage. As industries embrace large-scale automation, the role of data becomes paramount in fleet optimization and AI model training,” Kate MeLynda, President of Formant, said. “Formant’s cutting-edge platform simplifies the collection and management of robot data on a grand scale, ushering in a new era where AI seamlessly enhances physical automation.”

Jeff Linnell, the CEO and co-founder of Formant, was recently featured on The Robot Report podcast. Linnell discussed Formant’s recent funding as well as the company’s growth over the last year.