ForwardX Robotics adds $38M to Series B to scale AMRs

ForwardX AMRs autonomously pick up and drop off raw materials at TCL’s facility in Guangdong, China. | Photo Credit: ForwardX

ForwardX Robotics, a Beijing-based developer of autonomous mobile robots for warehousing and manufacturing environments, raised another $38 million for its Series B round of funding. The round was led by CDH Investments’s VGC, Eastern Bell Capital, and Dohold Capital. Other investors include Angel Around and ZGC Group.

The new funding brings ForwardX’s total Series B funding to more than $63 million. It initially raised $10 million in Series B funding in March 2019 and had an extension of $15 million in April 2020. Since its founding in 2016, ForwardX has now raised close to $74 million.

ForwardX Robotics will use the Series B funding to accelerate development of new and existing products, while expanding its market share across China and the United States. It said it will invest in new international markets, including Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

ForwardX said it uses computer vision and deep learning with multi-sensor input for functionality including segmentation, detection, tracking, and recognition to perceive scene semantics. Its offers three lines of AMRs – ForwardX Flex for moving, picking or packing workflows, ForwardX Max for moving heavy payloads, and ForwardX Apex for moving pallets.

“The next three-to-five years will be seen as the golden age of the AMR industry,” said Mingyu Wang, senior partner at CDH Investments. “With ForwardX’s multi-robot cluster scheduling capabilities and ability to commercialize its solution, we are very optimistic about ForwardX’s future and the value it will create in the AMR field.”

According to market research firm Interact Analysis, the AMR market is expected to reach revenue of over $9 billion by 2024 according to Interact Analysis.

“Last year, we co-operated with ForwardX on a project as part of our 5G digital transformation initiative. Our aim was to achieve unmanned material handling across the factory,” said Caijun Zhao, head of president’s office at TCL Industries Holdings, a subsidiary of TCL Technology. “The project has been successful so far with seamless collaboration between (ForwardX’s) AMRs, workers, machines, and the loading carts. We are now looking towards the second and third phases of the project.”