Plus One Robotics, a human-robot collaboration software company headquartered in San Antonio, has announced this week $33 million in Series B funding led by McRock Capital and Translink Capital, with participation from BMW i Ventures, Kensington Capital Partners, Perot Jain and Ironspring Ventures. The company has raised a total of $43.6 million since 2018.
“We’re fortunate to work with customers at the leading edge of warehouse automation who share our values of ‘Robots Work. People Rule.’ Like our clients, our investors have a global footprint representing Asia and the EU as well as North America. This potent combination sets Plus One on a course to continue growing our international installed base,” said co-founder and CEO Erik Nieves in the release.
Plus One’s 3D and AI-powered software helps simplify many of the material-handling challenges found at e-commerce fulfillment centers. With the help of Plus One’s software, warehouses can maneuver millions of stock keeping units (SKUs) within the sorting and depalletizing processes. With the company’s software, one human can operate up to 50 robots remotely.
The software leverages Yonder, a supervisory software that uses human intelligence to handle exceptions that commonly arise when handling products within e-commerce fulfillment centers. This type of deep learning software allows these robots to become smarter over time, decreasing the need for human involvement within the picking and sorting processes.
With the rise of e-commerce, this technology will become more important for fulfillment centers to implement into their processes in order to keep up with customer demand.
“The Plus One team has done an excellent job aggressively growing its business over the past two years. Their market traction and customer base validates the need for logistics automation using agnostic, scalable applications. Erik and the team have a deep bench of robotics and vision software experience that is widely respected, making Plus One beautifully positioned to dominate the sector” said Whitney Rockley of McRock Capital.
Rockley, along with Toshi Otani of Translink Capital, will join the company’s board of directors.
Plus One plans to use the funds raised to expand into the U.S. and Europe, along with continued product development.
“We believe that Plus One Robotics’ technology will usher in a new era of smart, adaptive robot systems to bring automation to new heights across supply chain, logistics and manufacturing. The beauty of Plus One’s technology is that it combines state-of-the-art computer-vision algorithms with a human-in-the-loop approach, enabling robots to operate at accuracy and throughput levels currently unmatched in the industry. This truly is the start of a new era of robotics-driven automation,” said Kasper Sage, a partner at BMW i Ventures.
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