The newly appointed chief technology officer of a Pittsburgh startup is stepping into his executive leadership role after previously serving as a founding engineer behind the startup that ultimately transformed into what is now known as Amazon Robotics.
Andrew Hoffman joins warehouse inventory monitoring startup Gather AI with more than 20 patents in robots, robot coordination and collision avoidance—all likely beneficial for the further development of Gather's off-the-shelf consumer drones that it modifies for the autonomous tracking and management of goods in warehouses across the country.
Hoffman's prior experience at Kiva Systems as a founding engineer as well as that at CANVAS Technology has seen him develop automated guided vehicles to perform work throughout warehouses of all kinds. Amazon.com Inc. acquired Kiva Systems in 2012 for $775 million and rebranded it to Amazon Robotics, which serves as a critical logistics stronghold for the global e-commerce giant.
"At Amazon Robotics, I had the tremendous opportunity to see how great business acuity, solid technical execution, and unwavering customer obsession leads to significant advancements in our industry," Hoffman said in a prepared statement. "I'm excited to join the strong Gather AI leadership team as they have the same chemistry that made Amazon Robotics successful."
Gather AI raised a $10 million Series A funding round in October 2022 led by Tribeca Venture Partners, a New York-based investment firm. Other participants included already existing funders such as Xplorer Capital, Dundee Venture Capital, Expa, Bling Capital, XRC Labs and 99 Tartans — a local investor that backs CMU startups like Gather AI, which Sankalp Arora, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey founded as a CMU Robotics Institute spinout company in 2018.
