Chinese warehousing robotics startup Geek+ announced it has raised over $200 million in Series C investment, one of the largest rounds closed in the warehousing industry to date. The company continues to remain the most funded warehousing robotics startup in the world with a Series B investment of $150 million in late 2018 and total funding of nearly $390 million.
This round of Series C funding was split into two individual fundraising events – one in 2019, which was led by GGV Capital, D1 Capital Partners along with Warburg Pincus, and the other that was finalized earlier this year led by V Fund, along with Redview Capital and Vertex Ventures.
Geek+ pioneers in artificial intelligence-enabled logistics robots that can maneuver without assistance across a warehouse floor. The company is the largest autonomous mobile robot (AMR) manufacturer in the world. It has deployed more than 10,000 robots in facilities of roughly 300 customers worldwide, with ongoing projects in over 20 countries.
AMRs are the evolved versions of the automated guided vehicles (AGVs) that have been in the industry for a few decades. AGVs are usually used for repetitive tasks in a warehouse, like relaying materials and fetching products. AGVs are not intelligent, and thus completely dependent on humans to determine their routes.
AMRs use artificial intelligence to intuitively understand a warehouse floor, updating their databases in real-time on the constant changes within inventories. AMRs can collaborate and work in tandem with other intelligent warehousing systems, helping warehouses run operations without hiccups even during the peak demand season.
Geek+ develops a full suite of logistics robots, covering various categories and scenarios within the warehousing and factory environments. AMRs include goods-to-person picking systems, bin-to-person robo-shuttles, disinfection robots, sorting, moving, automated forklifts, and other fully integrated solutions for automated fulfillment centers and smart factories.
“Our robotics solutions already create real and visible business returns for nearly 300 companies worldwide,” said Yong Zheng, the founder and CEO of Geek+. “We are proud of our achievements, confident in our continued growth and the depth of innovation and commercial application still to be explored for logistics robots. We know AMRs to be the future of global logistics, and are pleased with the investors’ confidence in their market prospects.”
Geek+ already counts large organizations like Alibaba, China Post and DHL as clients, assisting these companies with automated parcel sorting and making distribution operations more seamless. In May, Geek+ announced that it is partnering with Conveyco, a North American order fulfillment and distribution center system integrator company, to scale up its AMR presence across the continent.
Apart from focusing on expanding its geographic footprint, Geek+ seeks to ramp up its robot-as-a-service program, a business model it figures can make logistics robots more accessible and democratize access to small-, mid- and large-sized businesses alike.