Ori, the MassRobotics resident The Robot Report profiled just yesterday, raised $20 million in Series B funding for its robotic furniture. Ori said the funding will allow it to partner with “architects and builders on designing urban housing and spaces that are flexible, intelligent, sustainable and affordable.”
The investors who participated in the Series B include Geolo Capital, Ingka Group, Khosla Ventures, and Sidewalk Labs, which is an Alphabet company. The Ingka Group is one of 11 different groups of companies that own and operate IKEA retail under franchise agreements. Ori collaborated with IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer since 2008, on its ROGNAN line of robotic furniture.
Ori has raised $26 million since it was founded in 2015 by a team of engineers from MIT. It raised a $6 million Series A from Khosla Ventures in Sept. 2017.
“At Ori we see interior space differently; we’re challenging the centuries-old view that the functionality is linearly related to the amount of available physical space,” said Hasier Larrea, Ori Co-Founder and CEO. “It is so energizing for us to have the opportunity to partner and collaborate with investors who similarly are rethinking how urban centers should be built and who are working at the building, neighborhood and city scale.”
Ori has two products on the market. Its flagship product, Ori Studio Suite, that features a bed, an entertainment center, storage space, a 50-inch TV nook and more. And the Pocket Closet that has one or two shelving walls that move to reveal a walk-in closet.
Ori Studio Suite. | Credit: Ori
“In addressing the global housing crisis, Ori is taking on a challenge so large that breakthrough technology, and a genuinely different perspective, needs to be an integral part of the solution,” said Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures. “But it is a problem that also needs a very human solution. So we are excited that Ori has assembled an investor group that represents some of the best thinking on all aspects of the future of urban living.”
Ori is the latest success story for MassRobotics’ startups. WatchTower Robotics, which is developing robots to help cities maintain water pipes, was of three startups to win the Imagine H2O’s Urban Water Challenge in Stockholm, Sweden. The competition attracted 226 startups from 38 countries. WatchTower won funding to deploy its robots in Da Nang, Vietnam.
Pison was recently awarded an AFWERX (US Air Force) phase 2 grant for autonomous drone control for $2.7M. It comprised of $1.2M from AFWERX and $1.5M from SOCOM (United States Special Operations Command). ThayerMahan was awarded a $19.4 million contract to develop autonomous marine systems for Navy and Marine Corps missions.
MassRobotics has also seen several startups outgrow and graduate from its startup space, including American Robotics, Autonodyne, Realtime Robotics, Square Robot and more.
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