San Francisco-based OSARO, a machine learning company founded in 2015 that specializes in AI for industrial automation, raised $16 million in Series B funding. OSARO will use the funding to hire employees, enhance its OSARO Pick and OSARO Vision products, and deploy them internationally.
This round brings OSARO’s total funding to $29.3 million. It raised a $10 million Series A in April 2017 and a $3.3 million Seed Round in December 2015. The Series B round was funded by King River Capital, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Founders Fund, Pegasus Tech Ventures, GiTV Fund, and existing investors.
The company’s flagship product, OSARO Pick, automates stationary picking stations in goods-to-robots distribution centers. OSARO said it has multiple customers in e-commerce order fulfillment and intralogistics, and that it plans to expand into handling order fulfillment in electronics, apparel, groceries, pharmaceuticals, and more.
“A key element of our competitive advantage is OSARO Vision’s deep learning algorithms,” said OSARO CEO Derik Pridmore. “These algorithms generalize picking tasks with minimal training data and no SKU registration for quick, scalable solutions. In addition, as a software company, we support a wide array of commodity hardware and robotic arms which lets our customers select options that best fit their needs.
OSARO Pick demo at FOOMA Japan. 2019 | Credit: OSARO
According to research firm Tractica, investment in warehouse and logistics automation is expected to increase from $8.3 billion in 2018 to $30.8 billion by 2022.
“We are very excited to be leading this funding round,” said Megan Guy, Co-founder and Partner of King River Capital, who will be joining OSARO’s Board of Directors. “It is rare and exciting to work with a team that has both world class deep learning talent and a highly commercial orientation. OSARO’s perception and control software enables full automation of some of the most difficult vision, picking, and manufacturing problems, and its ability to integrate with a wide range of robotics hardware means that it can be deployed not only in greenfield environments but also as a retrofit solution to transform industrial automation.”
The Robot Report tracked nearly 50 robotics investments in August 2019 worth more than $2 billion. Check out The Robot Report‘s Investment Section to stay updated on the latest funding and M&A news.
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