Covariant adds $75 million in Series C Funds to meet demand for scaled AI robotics deployments

Covariant, an AI robotics company, has announced it has raised an additional $75 million in Series C funds, bringing its total funding to $222 million.

Returning investors Radical Ventures and Index Ventures co-led the round, which also saw additional funding from returning investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Amplify Partners. The round also welcomed new investors Gates Frontier Holdings, AIX Ventures, and Northgate Capital.

The funding will be used to ensure today’s leading retailers and their logistics providers are able to deploy robotic picking quickly and without disruption to their current operations, Covariant stated. This comes at a time when retail executives are eager to invest in AI-powered robotic automation: according to a Covariant-led research survey from February 2023, more than 80% of retail leaders see automation as a key solution for navigating operational uncertainty in an unpredictable marketplace – and 98% plan to further invest in AI Robotics in 2023 despite current economic conditions.

“The leading companies have turned to AI Robotics to automate their most manual operations in order to decrease labor costs, increase throughput, and control profitability,” said Peter Chen, Chief Executive Officer, Covariant. “The past year for Covariant has been incredible with 6x growth in 2022 – and we are just getting started. This infusion of new capital allows us to scale even faster, ensuring more retailers can automate more parts of their fulfillment networks to remove manual bottlenecks, handle fluctuating demand, and better prepare for ever-changing business needs.”

Since its initial Series C in 2021, Covariant noted that it has taken its AI platform – the Covariant Brain – and successfully applied it to a broad set of piece-picking and case-picking applications. In less than two years, the company’s product portfolio has grown to include order sortation, item induction, good-to-person order picking, kitting, and depalletization solutions – all powered by a unified AI platform. By leveraging the first foundation model for robotics, retailers, 3PLs, and warehouse integration providers are able to leverage the same AI platform to power a variety of robotic systems regardless of use case, facility type, or location. Connected robots learn as a fleet – enabling operational improvements to automatically propagate across customers' networks, Covariant noted.

“Covariant has proven it’s the world’s leading AI Robotics company, with AI enabling the successful deployment of robots at scale to secure global supply chains. That helps brands improve consumer trust, retailer confidence, and profitability, even in a time of economic uncertainty,” said Jordan Jacobs, Managing Partner of Radical Ventures.