Vision company Cambrian Robotics receives $25 million in seed funding

Recently, Cambrian Robotics, a London- based machine vision startup, announced this week that it has successfully raised $3.5 million in seed funding. The company is headquartered in London and has offices in Augsburg, Germany and the United States. Cambrian Robotics said they intend to use the funds to continue developing their artificial intelligence platform to enable robotic arms to surpass human capabilities in complex visual tasks in various industries.

According to the company's leaders, their technology can meet general automation scenarios, especially in advanced manufacturing and quality assurance tasks that require high precision and accuracy, which are often performed in dynamic environments.

Cambrian Robotics team members have extensive experience in the field of artificial intelligence. The CEO is Miika Satori, who has more than 50 years of experience in artificial intelligence and robotics. The Chief Technology Officer Joao Seabra is an award-winning roboticist, and the Director of AI, Dr. Alexandre Borghi, previously led a research team at a $3 billion AI chip startup.

CEO Satori said after the financing: "Our main goal is to increase the scalability of our products and strengthen our sales and operations in key target markets. In addition, we are bringing new AI-based vision skills to the robot arm to further push the boundaries of the robotics field."

Cambrian Robotics said that their AI-driven vision software and camera hardware enable existing robots to automatically perform complex tasks that could only be done manually before. The R&D team said that their system enables robots to perform complex assembly processes, box picking, kitting and pick-and-place operations with unparalleled precision in any lighting conditions, which is a real breakthrough compared to the current industry-leading AI vision capabilities.

The uniqueness of Cambrian Robotics' technology is also reflected in its easy installation and high adaptability. Cambrian takes about half a day to install, can be used with all major industrial and collaborative robots , and can accurately pick up micro parts within 200 milliseconds. Their system can pick a variety of parts, including transparent, plastic and shiny metal.

It is revealed that several of the world's leading home appliance manufacturers have deployed Cambrian to inspect manufacturing defects that are difficult to detect with the naked eye. Cambrian is testing and deploying their vision systems to leading manufacturers such as Toyota, Audi, Suzuki, Kao and Electrolux.

“Although our factory is highly automated, we still have a large number of flexible components and manual processes that increase variability,” said Jaume Soriano, Industrial Engineer at Electrolux Group. “Cambrian helps us keep moving toward a more automated manufacturing reality while being able to handle variable scenarios.”

Cybernetix Ventures led the seed round for Cambrian Robotics, with participation from KST Invest GmbH. Yamaha Motor Ventures and Digital Media Professionals (DMP) also participated in the round.

“Machine vision is a crowded space, but Cambrian has a strong differentiated capability to recognize small transparent objects using proprietary vision AI software,” said Fady Saad, founder and general partner of Cybernetix, who joined Cambrian’s board of directors. “Miika and his outstanding team have successfully brought the product to market and are generating positive revenue from top brands.”

Boston-based Cybernetix Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investing in early-stage robotics, automation, and industrial artificial intelligence startups. It provides expertise to companies poised to make a significant impact in areas such as advanced manufacturing, logistics/warehousing, architecture, engineering and construction, and healthcare /medical devices.

KST Invest is a private equity fund established by one of the owner families of a leading German industrial automation company. The fund aims to invest in themes such as robotics and advanced manufacturing. "Innovation is the bread and butter of any business in the industrial automation sector, especially the combination of vision and robotics," it said.

Cambrian is also backed by ff Venture Capital (ffVC), which invested in the company’s seed round. ffVC initially provided seed funding to the company after Cambrian graduated from its accelerator, AI Nexus Lab, in partnership with NYU Brooklyn’s Tandon School of Engineering.