December 2021 robotics investments and acquisitions

The Robot Report tracked 58 robotics investments in December 2021 that totaled at least $1.2 billion. There were five mergers and acquisitions that included two via special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

The largest round of the month went to Maryland-based Robotic Research, which raised $228 million in Series A funding. Robotic Research spent the better part of two decades developing autonomous driving technology for the U.S. Department of Defense. With the Series A funding, the first outside capital the company raised, Robotic Research launched a commercial division called RR.AI. This new endeavor is developing autonomous driving technology for commercial truck, bus and logistics vehicles.

The second-largest round also went to an autonomous driving company. China’s Haomo raised $157 million in Series A funding from GL Ventures, Meituan, Qualcomm Ventures and others. Formerly the intelligent driving department of Great Wall Motor, Haomo is developing L4 autonomous driving technology to deliver groceries and other goods.

Chinese companies raised the most funding rounds at 19, which totaled at least $461.4 million. This is a much higher number than we’ve typically seen. Are the increased investments related to China’s new five-year plan to become a global robotics powerhouse? It’s too early to tell, but we’ll be keeping a closer eye on China’s robotics investments going forward. U.S.-based companies accounted for 17 investments for a total of at least $521.8 million.

Companies working on autonomous driving applications led the way in overall funding and number of funding rounds. The 13 investments totaled at least $575.6 million. While surgical robotics companies only accounted for 2 of the funding rounds, they totaled the second-highest amount at $117 million.

Here is a breakdown of the funding rounds for December 2021, in order of most to least: Series A (15), Seed (11), Other (10), Series B (9), Unknown (9), Series C (2), Series D (1) and Pre-Seed (1).

The table below lists robotics company fundings in millions of U.S. dollars, where amounts were publicly available. If more of the funding amounts become available, we will update the chart.

Robotics investments December 2021

Company	Round	Amount ($M)	Tech	Country
Drone Express	Seed		Aerial drones	U.S.
Haomo	Series A	157	Autonomous driving	China
RainMed Medical	Series D	100	Surgical robots	China
Youibot	Series B	47	Mobile robots	China
Qiangua Technology	Series A	31	Autonomous driving	China
ForwardX Robotics	Series C	31	Mobile robots	China
Trunk.Tech	Unknown	30	Autonomous driving	China
i-KINGTEC	Series B	15.7	Aerial drones	China
Zhuishi Technology	Series A	15.7	Autonomous driving	China
Yiwei Semiconductor	Unknown	15.7	Motion control	China
Xiaodou Intelligent Technology	Angel	9	Maritime systems	China
White Rhino	Seed	7.8	Autonomous driving	China
Zhi'an New Energy	Angel	1.5	Battery power	China
Jingwu Smart	Series A		Cleaning robots	China
Microchain Vision	Series A		3D vision	China
Passion Intelligence	Series A		Logistics robots	China
Robosense	Unknown		LiDAR	China
Aimooe	Seed		Positioning	China
Wangyuan Environmental Protection & Technology	Series A		Cleaning robots	China
WeRide	Corporate Round		Autonomous driving	China
Robocath	Debt Financing	17	Surgical robots	France
Vay	Series B	95	Autonomous driving	Germany
Blickfeld	Series A	31	LiDAR	Germany
Wingcopter	Unknown		Aerial drones	Germany
Ducktrain	Seed		Autonomous driving	Germany
GreyOrange	Debt Financing	13	Logistics robots	India
Unbox Robotics	Series A	7	Logistics robots	India
DTown Robotics	Seed	0.5	Service robots	India
Flo Mobility	Seed	0.4	Autonomous driving	India
Anra Technologies	Unknown		Aerial Drones	India
Rightbot	Convertible Note		Logistics robots	India
Pace Robotics	Seed		Construction robots	India
Powermat Technologies	Series B	25	Wireless charging	Israel
Brodmann17	Series A	10	Autonomous driving	Israel
Kitchen Robotics	Funding Round		Food robotics	Israel
ALBA Robot	Debt Financing	0.7	Autonomous driving	Italy
Aivero	Seed	1.8	3D vision	Norway
EMYS	Series A		Educational robots	Poland
Photoneo	Series B	21	3D vision	Slovakia
Klepsydra	Seed	1	Software	Switzerland
Rovenso	Convertible Note		Security robots	Switzerland
Robotic Research	Series A	228	Autonomous driving	U.S.
Apex.AI	Series B	56	Software	U.S.
Dedrone	Series C	30.5	Anti-drone software	U.S.
Elementary Robotics	Series B	30	Inspection	U.S.
Petra	Series A	30	Construction robots	U.S.
SkySafe	Series B	30	Aerial drones	U.S.
Kneron	Series B	25	Computing	U.S.
Hyphen	Unknown	21.7	Food robots	U.S.
Electric Sheep Robotics	Series A	21.5	Autonomous lawnmowers	U.S.
Voyant Photonics	Series A	15.4	LiDAR	U.S.
Serve Robotics	Seed	13	Delivery robots	U.S.
Teleo	Unknown	7.8	Construction robots	U.S.
SparkAI	Unknown	6.7	Software	U.S.
Treeswift	Unknown	6	Environmental robots	U.S.
Ottonomy	Pre-Seed	1.2	Delivery robots	U.S.
Faction	Seed		Autonomous driving	U.S.
Botrista Technology	Funding Round		Food robots	U.S.

Robotics mergers & acquisitions

The Robot Report tracked 5 mergers and acquisitions in December 2021. Most of the deals didn’t publicly disclose financial details, but Symbotic’s merger with SVF Investment Corp. 3, a SPAC sponsored by an affiliate of SoftBank Investment Advisers, led the way. The deal values Wilmington, Mass.-based Symbotic at a pro forma enterprise value of $4.8 billion, representing 4.8x Symbotic’s forecast 2023 calendar year end estimated revenues. Symbotic said it expects to generate $433 million in revenue in 2022, which would be more than a 73% increase year over year.

Founded in 2005, Symbotic’s robotics systems are used by some of the world’s biggest retailers and wholesalers, including Walmart, Albertsons and C&S Wholesale Grocers. Its fleet of robots can receive, store and retrieve products in distribution centers. At the core of the system is a fleet of several hundred autonomous mobile robots called “Symbots.”

Acquirer	Acquired Company	Amount ($M)	Tech	Story
DePuy Synthes	OrthoSpin		Healthcare robots	Story
Delhivery	Transition Robotics		Aerial drones	Story
SVF Investment Corp	Symbotic	(SPAC)	Logistics robots	Story
Ryder	Whiplash	480	Logistics robots	Story
CleanTech Acquisition Corp.	Nauticus Robotics	(SPAC)	Maritime robots	Story

Editors’ note: What defines robotics investments? The answer to this simple question is central in any attempt to quantify them with some degree of rigor. To make investment analyses consistent, repeatable, and valuable, it is critical to wring out as much subjectivity as possible during the evaluation process. This begins with a definition of terms and a description of assumptions.

Investors and investing
Investment should come from venture capital firms, corporate investment groups, angel investors, and other sources. Friends-and-family investments, government/non-governmental agency grants, and crowd-sourced funding are excluded.

Robotics and intelligent systems companies
Robotics companies must generate or expect to generate revenue from the production of robotics products (that sense, analyze, and act in the physical world), hardware or software subsystems and enabling technologies for robots, or services supporting robotics devices. For this analysis, autonomous vehicles (including technologies that support autonomous driving) and drones are considered robots, while 3D printers, CNC systems, and various types of “hard” automation are not.

Companies that are “robotic” in name only, or use the term “robot” to describe products and services that do not enable or support devices acting in the physical world, are excluded. For example, this includes “software robots” and robotic process automation. Many firms have multiple locations in different countries. Company locations given in the analysis are based on the publicly listed headquarters in legal documents, press releases, etc.

Verification
Funding information is collected from a number of public and private sources. These include press releases from corporations and investment groups, corporate briefings, industry analysts, and association and industry publications, including Crunchbase PitchBook and Tracxn. In addition, information comes from sessions at conferences and seminars, as well as during private interviews with industry representatives, investors, and others. Unverifiable investments are excluded.