Covariant announced yesterday that it has raised $75 million in a recent Series C round. The Berkeley, Calif.-based robotic-picking company told Robotics 24/7 that the funding will be used to help it continue to deploy its systems to materials handling customers.
“This is a very tough capital market to raise money, so our ability to raise a substantial amount of venture funding speaks to the traction, both in terms of technology and the commercial market, that we have created,” CEO Peter Chen said in an interview.
Covariant deploys robotic picking systems that take advantage of the Covariant Brain, its proprietary artificial intelligence platform. Its systems are used for sortation, batch-picking, returns processing operations, induction, goods-to-person picking, kitting, and depalletization.
Earlier this year, Robotics 24/7 highlighted a case study the company published about its systems being installed at a Radial Inc. fulfillment center.
Covariant survey finds automation demand still strong
To date, the customers has raised a total of $222 million, according to Crunchbase.
In a press release announcing the funding, the company highlighted a recent survey it conducted that found that “more than 80% of retailers leaders see automation as a key solution for navigating operational uncertainty in an unpredictably marketplace.”
The survey also found that 98% of retail leaders plan to invest in some kind of automation this year.
“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,” Chen said in a prepared statement. “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,” he added.
The funding round was led by Radical Ventures, Index Ventures. Additional investors included Canada Pension Plan Investment and Amplify Partners, Gates Frontier Holdings, AIX Ventures, and Northgate Capital.
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