The Boston-based company behind the human-ish helper robot Baxter has disclosed $26.6 million in new funding, an SEC filing shows. The total offering amount cited in the filing by Rethink Robotics is $39.9 million. A spokeswoman on Tuesday said the company isn't saying who the investors are in the round right now.
Update: Rethink has named the investors in the round.
Robotics legend Rodney Brooks, who previously co-founded iRobot and developed the Roomba, founded Rethink Robotics in 2008 and debuted Baxter in 2012. The company has now raised at least $100.1 million in funding to date; Rethink last raised money in the fall of 2013.
Previous investors in Rethink have included Sigma Partners, CRV, Highland Capital Partners, DFJ, Jeff Bezos' Bezos Expeditions and Two Sigma Ventures.
Baxter—which has two arms and a gripper on each arm, is easy to program and sells for the relatively cheap price of $25,000—has predominantly been used in manufacturing settings for automating repetitive tasks, such as picking and placing objects. Upgrades to the Baxter software have improved the precision and speed of the robot, company executives have said.
I last covered Rethink in August; at the time, while there hadn't been an astounding number of manufacturers who'd adopted Baxter, those that were early adopters have begun placing additional orders for the robot.
Rethink's top rival is Universal Robots, a Denmark company with its U.S. headquarters on Long Island, which makes a robotic arm that can perform similar tasks to Baxter.
