Chef Robotics raises $43M Series A to scale AI-enabled robots

Creators of AI-enabled robotic systems for meal assembly Chef Robotics recently announced it has raised $43.1 million in new Series A funding.

The funding includes $20.6 million in equity and $22.5 million in equipment financing debt. The latter will be used to cover the financing of Chef’s robotic systems for its robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) deployment model, so its customers don’t have to front capital expenditures (CapEx) for their robots.

The equity round was led by Avataar Ventures and included investments from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, MFV Partners, Interwoven, HCVC, MaC Venture Capital, Red and Blue Ventures, Tau Partners, Siddhi Capital, and BOLD Capital Partners. 

The new funding brings Chef’s total capital raised to $65.6 million which consists of $38.8M in equity and $26.75M in equipment financing, all with Silicon Valley Bank, a Division of First Citizens Bank. 

Collecting data at scale to train AI models

Chef robots have produced over 44 million servings through robot deployments at brands such as Amy’s Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay, and Cafe Spice.

The data that Chef collects on each meal assembled is critical to the company as it relies on real-world production data to train its AI models including ChefOS, its AI platform for food manipulation.

Chef said the funding round will allow it to accelerate production deployments of its robotic systems, providing momentum for the real-world AI data engine flywheel that the company credits for its rapid growth rate of meals produced. 

Given food is highly variable, Chef requires high volumes of production data over prolonged periods of time for optimal model performance. The more data Chef collects in the field, the more its systems' performance improves, the more customers use Chef’s robotic systems, the more customers expand. This expansion in turn creates more runtime in production leading to more data from the field. It also means that when Chef approaches new customers, it can help manipulate their ingredients from the get-go, further accelerating the flywheel’s momentum. 

“Robotics is really having a moment right now. The innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of embodied AI for robotics,” said Rajat Bhageria, Chef Robotics founder and CEO. “We believe we’re in the pole position to scale given all the real-world production training data we already have” 

Funding to help scale deployments

“AI in the physical world is happening right now with robotics. Food is one of the largest markets in the world. Industrial AI is already winning, and food packaging automation is quietly transforming how we get our meals,” said Mohan Kumar, Avataar Ventures founder and managing partner. “We look forward to this exciting partnership with Chef Robotics as they expand their global leadership” 

Additionally, this latest infusion of funds will enable Chef to scale its go-to-market team and efforts. The company said this funding round equips it to further invest in non-engineering functions like sales and marketing to scale its automation system deployments for food packaging. 

Chef currently serves customers in the U.S. and Canada, with plans to expand to the U.K. market in 2025.