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One of RobotPlusPlus’ storage tank hydroblasting robots at work. | Source: Robotplusplus

RobotPlusPlus, a company developing magnetic crawler robots for aerial work, brought in $15 million in Series B funding. Its portfolio of solutions work in a variety of industries, including maritime, ship repair, petrochemicals and power generation. 

The company plans to use the recent round of funding to accelerate its research and development timeline and expand its global presence. RobotPlusPlus is based in Beijing, and has mostly focused on selling domestically, but the company already has expansion plans in motion. It plans to open a Singapore office soon. 

“While we’ve previously focused on the Chinese market, 2021 has brought us more success outside China. We’re looking forward to making our solutions available to a broader audience and cementing our position as a key player globally,” Andy Lu, partner & SVP of RobotPlusPlus, said.

The company’s core product portfolio includes four robots, a ship derusting robot, a boiler robot for inspection and cleaning, a chemical tank grinding robot and a wall climbing robot solution. 

“Our latest round of funding contributes to the positive momentum we have been building over the past year. With a growing market share across our key territories, we look to continue to deliver more transformational results to our current and future clients,” RobotPlusPlus founder and CEO Hua-yang Xu said.

Meituan, a Chinese technology and online retail company, and Fosun, a global consumer group, led the funding round. 

“An aging workforce, rising labor costs, frequent aerial work-related accidents, and the COVID-19 pandemic have had an accelerative effect on the aerial work robotics sector,” Pu Xiao, investment manager at Fosun, said. “RobotPlusPlus’ mission is to empower humans with robots while helping increase operational safety and productivity. We’re excited to support RobotPlusPlus in leveraging AI and RaaS to optimize aerial work environments and enable robotic applications.”

RobotPlusPlus was founded in 2017, and has raised around $35 million since its founding. Its technology has been successfully used in inspection, flaw detection, cleaning, derusting, spraying, polishing and more.