Investors are enjoying food cooked by robots.
Spyce, the Boston-based robotic kitchen launched by four MIT grads in late 2015, announced on Friday the close of a $21 million Series A round.
The round was led by Collaborative Fund and Maveron, with additional participation from existing investor Khosla Ventures.
Collaborative Fund, an early-stage VC firm with offices in San Francisco and New York City, is among the backers of technology and consumer companies including Sweetgreen and Lyft; Maveron, which focuses on both seed- and Series A-stage investments, was among the backers of Boston-based payment startup Flywire in 2011.
Funding for this round also came from chefs Thomas Keller, Jerome Bocuse and Gavin Kaysen, who joined Spyce's culinary director Daniel Boulud.
Spyce said it will use the funding to open new restaurants on the East Coast and further develop their robotic culinary platform.
The company opened its first fast-casual, robot-powered eatery in Boston's Downtown Crossing in early May this year.
The minds behind the kitchen - Kale Rogers, Michael Farid, Brady Knight and Luke Schlueter - were teammates on the water polo team and members of the same fraternity at MIT. The began to work full-time on the venture in 2016, after Rogers, Knight and Schlueter graduated from undergraduate, and Farid from graduate school. Later, they earned the collective title "Spyce boys."
Chef Daniel Boulud came onboard after Farid guessed his email address and sent him a video of what they had created so far.
“It’s been a lot of hard work, but the feedback has been fantastic,” Sam Benson, a former sous chef at Café Boulud and Spyce's executive chef, said in a previous interview with BostInno. “We have big dreams for this.”
Thanks to the round, the company also expects to hire additional employees to roughly double in size over the next year.
The Spyce menu is made up of different bowl options starting at $7.50.
