Mytra, new warehouse robotics company founded by ex-Tesla and Rivian leaders, launches

Mytra, a startup which offers a three-dimensional robotics solution, today launched with $78 million in total financing through the Series B stage and several commercial partners, including Albertsons Companies. Founded by ex-Tesla and Rivian robotics and manufacturing leaders, Mytra will automate the most common industrial task: moving and storing material, the company explained.

Eighty-five percent of global GDP is attributed to physical goods according to analysis from Eclipse, and more than half of all the work in making and delivering those goods to customers involves moving material. Although moving material is so pervasive and critical to the economy, the current process in warehouses and manufacturing facilities has changed very little in 50 years, Mytra said. Unprecedented pressures on manufacturing and supply chain, in addition to rapidly growing labor shortages, have made it clear that the legacy way of operating warehouses — with people and forklifts — needs to change, the company added.

"Material flow makes up the lion's share of the work in a warehouse but is still largely done the same way it was a century ago. This is because the alternatives are too complex, have too many parts, and are customized for specific applications," said Chris Walti, Co-Founder and CEO at Mytra. "We're taking a radically different approach by reducing the number of parts and moving the focus from hardware to software. We are the first and only solution that can universally automate many of the most labor-intensive, costly, and complex aspects of material flow, which are the 'red blood cells' of any industrial operation. Mytra enables infinite ways to move, store, and retrieve materials, changing applications instantly — all of which are controlled by software. This will drive massive efficiencies not only within warehouses but also in adjacent transportation and manufacturing operations."

Mytra's solution is comprised only three individual components: bots, a simple and repeating matrix structure, and edge-intelligent software, which the company said simplifies the deployment process, reduces cost, and avoids single points of failure. Mytra further explained that its system allows for full 3D movement at up to 3000 pounds from any cell to any adjacent cell in any direction. Meanwhile, the company added, its software platform optimizes bot routes, manages inventory, and continuously learns and improves, adjusting to changing customer needs.

Mytra's founding team brings expertise in hardware, software, and operations from companies like Tesla, Rivian, Stitch Fix, Walmart, and Slack. Walti, who, prior to Mytra, led the Optimus Humanoid Bot team along with robotics and warehouse logistics at Tesla, founded Mytra alongside Ahmad Baitalmal, who led factory software at Tesla and Rivian. The company was born out of the Venture Equity (VE) team at Eclipse, which partners with world-class founders to catalyze new businesses and accelerate their growth.

Mytra is backed by several investors, including Greenoaks, who led the company's Series B, Eclipse, who led the previous seed and Series A rounds, in addition to Co-founder and Chairman of Okta Frederic Kerrest's 515 Ventures, and individual investors, Garry Tan, Lachy Groom, among other individual and corporate partners.

"Warehouses are the backbone of the global economy," said Neil Shah, Partner at Greenoaks. "Yet the vast majority of the world's warehouses remain manual, and even those that are automated remain too complex and too rigid to meet the challenges of modern supply chains. By creating a software-defined automation system, Mytra breaks the trade-off between automation and flexibility, abstracting away the complexity of hardware, increasing density, dramatically boosting throughput, and delivering a resilient system that can adapt as quickly as the needs of customers change. By making best-in-class automation available to all, we believe that Chris and his team will define the next generation of modern warehousing – and we are thrilled to partner with them for years to come."

Mytra's system is already deployed in production at select Albertsons Cos. distribution centers, where it buffers and sequences inventory prior to shipping to stores. Across its customer base, Mytra estimates that warehouses save up to 88% of labor hours and experience double the internal rate of return compared with current best-in-class technologies on the market.

"Mytra's automation system offers unique flexibility to address many different applications using the same hardware," said Mustafa Harcar, Vice President of Supply Chain Automation at Albertsons Companies. "Mytra's highly simplified approach has the potential to unlock new levels of efficiency, with the confidence that the system can adapt to future needs."