Bear Robotics Announces $81M Series B for Hospitality Robots

Bear Robotics Inc. today announced the completion of a $81 million Series B funding round. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company provides robots for the restaurant and hospitality industries.

Founded in 2017, Bear Robotics described its flagship product, Servi, as an "all-in-one," fully autonomous mobile robot (AMR) that can perform food bussing and waiting duties such as delivering food to customers and picking up dirty dishes.

The company released the robot in 2020 in partnership with SoftBank Robotics Group. The AMR uses artifical intellgence and self-driving technology to help it navigate environments, according to Bear Robotics.

Mobile waiter at your service

The company said casinos, senior living center facilities, and corporate campuses have used its service robots.

“Having started my own restaurant years ago, I learned firsthand just how hard things could get,” said John Ha, co-founder and CEO of Bear Robotics. “I thought there must be a way to automate some of these repetitive tasks without losing what makes a restaurant great. That’s why we created Servi."

"It’s a solution meant to enhance the experience of customers, employees, and operators," he added. "While others are trying to fully automate work, we’re trying to elevate the future of work for stakeholders in this industry that keep it going each day.”

Bear Robotics said it will use the funding to iterate on its products and to hire more staffers.

“Achieving this next round of funding is a key milestone for us to be able to accelerate our product roadmap and expand our go-to-market initiatives with our partners,” said Juan Higueros, co-founder and chief operating officer of Bear Robotics. "We’ve also been extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to help small and medium-sized businesses during the recent labor shortage, and [we] look forward to our continued impact there."

Bear Robotics' Servi robots was released in 2020. Source: Bear Robotics

Hospitality market poised to grow

The hospitality robot market could be valued at $3 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.5% between 2022 and 2030, estimated Allied Market Research.

Other big players in the space include Miso Robotics, which in February announced it was going to place its Flippy 2 frying robots in more than 100 White Castle locations.

Food service management company Chartwell Higher Education is working with Pinic Works Inc. to install Pinic's robotic pizza stations in more than 300 academic institutions.

New investor IMM led Bear Robotics' Series B round with participation from Cleveland Avenue LLC and other existing investors. To date, Bear Robotics said it has raised $117 million in total funding, including a $32 million Series A funding round in January 2020 led by SoftBank.