Soft Robotics Inc., a startup building bots with dexterous gripping "hands," has a new high-profile investor: FANUC Corp., the world’s largest industrial robot manufacturer.
The Bedford-based startup announced Monday that it raised $23 million in a Series B round co-led by Calibrate Ventures and Material Impact. Existing investors Honeywell, Boston-based Hyperplane Ventures, Scale, Tekfen Ventures, and Yamaha also participated in the round.
Founded in 2012, and led by Carl Vause, a former naval flight officer for the US Navy, Soft Robotics emerged by commercializing technology developed at Harvard University. Its technology allows robotic grippers to pick up many different kinds of objects, including delicate ones.
The company will use the funds to expand its customer base to work with e-commerce logistics, food packaging and consumer goods.
“Variability is the kryptonite of the robotics industry. By offering a system that is able to grasp and manipulate items that vary in size, shape, and weight, we are able to solve the problem of high variability in both products and processes,” Vause said in a statement.
Soft Robotics' technology is instrumental in handling delicate items such as food packages, consumer goods including cosmetics and apparel. The company will focus on e-commerce logistics to address the high cost of online returns.
