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Fruitcore Robotics brought in 23 million euros, over $24 million, in Series B funding last week. Fruitcore Robotics offers a line of industrial robotic arms that utilize the company’s Highly Optimized Robotic Systems Technology (HORST). 

“With the closing of our Series B financing, we are again a big step closer to our goal of making robotics and automation solutions accessible to the masses. We see that the demand for high-quality and easy-to-use robots in the market is steadily increasing. Therefore, we will use the new capital primarily to serve the demand for our robotics and automation solutions as well as digital products in the European market,” Jens Riegger, Managing Director (CEO) and co-founder of Fruitcore Robotics, said.

The company plans to use the funding to accelerate product innovation, sales, marketing and international expansion. The Germany-based company has operations in its home country as well as in Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Fruitcore Robotics hopes it can expand into more of the European market by the end of 2023. 

Fruitcore Robotics aims to keep the barriers to automating low by providing low investment costs, fast implementation, intuitive programming and high performance. It offers a line of three industrial robots, the HORST600, HORST900 and HORST1400, as well as software packages to run the robots. The robots can handle payloads between 3 and 12 kilograms (6.6 – 26.5 lbs) and have reaches of 600, 900 and 1400 millimeters (23.6″, 35.4″, 55.1″). 

The company also offers the HORST600 lab robot system that is specifically designed for pharmaceutical and chemical enterprises as well as for laboratory and research facilities. 

“We are still at the beginning of the robots’ growth trajectory, especially in medium-sized businesses, and we are convinced that with our ‘digital robot’ HORST we are one of the game changers and thus a driving force for the broad use of robots in the manufacturing industry. We would like to thank our investors for the trust they have placed in us,” Patrick Heimburger, Managing Director (Chief Revenue Officer) at Fruitcore Robotics, said. 

The company originates from a spin-off of the HTWG Konstanz (Hochschule Konstanz Technik Wirtschaft und Gestaltung). After research work by Riegger and Frey in the robotics field, the first HORST prototypes were produced in 2016. The team received the EXIST-Gründerstipendium for high startup projects, a startup funding from the federal government and the EU, and founded Fruitcore Robotics GmbH in May 2017. 

Fruitcore Robotics’ last funding round was in 2021, when it brought in $20 million in Series A financing.