Former Amazon vice president, raised 700 million in financing

On April 10, Brad Porter, CEO of the U.S. collaborative robot startup Collaborative Robotics, announced on X that it had completed a huge round B financing of US$100 million (approximately RMB 720 million).

This round of financing was led by General Catalyst, and existing shareholders Sequoia Capital, OpenAI's early investor Khosla Ventures, Industry Ventures, Lux Capital and other top VCs have all increased their investment. It is reported that this round of funds will be used to expand the team, promote commercial deployment, and help the company further expand its territory in the field of collaborative robots .

This company, which has only 35 employees, has raised three rounds of financing in less than two years, with a total amount of funds raised exceeding US$140 million (approximately RMB 1.01 billion) and a valuation of over US$500 million (approximately RMB 3.62 billion). Why has it won the favor of so many investors?

Amazon's outstanding engineer left to start his own business

Brad Porter, the founder of Collaborative Robotics, has a prominent background.

Porter has been passionate about building robots, remote-controlled airplanes, and helicopters since he was a child. It was this passion and curiosity that led him to pursue a bachelor's and master's degree in computer science at MIT.

Before joining Amazon, he worked as an engineer at browser pioneer Netscape and was active for eight years at voice search company Tellme Networks as employee No. 05 and chief security officer. In March 2007, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Networks, and Poter resigned immediately after the official announcement and joined Amazon in January of the following year.

After joining Amazon, Poter rose through the ranks, working his way up from director of website platform development to vice president and distinguished engineer of Amazon Robotics in 14 years. He now has more than 10,000 employees under him and oversees the deployment of more than 200,000 robots. He has witnessed Amazon's transformation from a traditional e-commerce company to a full embrace of logistics automation and is an important creator of Amazon's "Robot Kingdom."

In August 2020, Poter officially announced his resignation from Amazon and seamlessly joined Scale AI, an artificial intelligence unicorn founded by Chinese "genius boy" Alexandr Wang, as Chief Technology Officer. At Scale, Poter more than doubled the size of the company's engineering organization, acquired two companies, expanded product coverage, and saw opportunities to accelerate autonomy through data and tools, realizing that the industry has a huge demand for safe, economical mobile robots that can work seamlessly with humans.

"The current trend is that AI is already capable of important tasks," but how to deeply integrate artificial intelligence with robots to create an intelligent system that can truly collaborate seamlessly with humans remains a problem.

So, based on years of practice and thinking, a new concept of collaborative robots gradually took shape in his mind. With this ambitious idea, in 2022, Poter founded Collaborative Robotics with other Jane Mooney (formerly Amazon) and Steph Tryphonas (formerly Tellme and Microsoft).

Mysterious Robotics Project

Looking at the development trend of robots, it is not difficult to find that there are two extremes.

One is the traditional industrial robot, which is usually designed and deployed for a single specific task, isolated from humans, expensive and less flexible; the other type of flexible robots, including humanoid robots, which focus on "freedom" and "intelligence", have a wide range of uses, but also have problems such as complex deployment and high cost, and there are many limitations when they are implemented in actual scenarios.

Collaborative Robotics hopes to develop a "new type of collaborative robot" that can not only perform tasks such as palletizing, sorting, and handling as easily as ordinary industrial robots, but can also seamlessly collaborate with humans in multiple environments such as logistics, services, medical care , and hotels, redefining the future of human-machine interaction.

In addition, Collaborative Robotics is designed with the concept of "trustworthiness".

Poter believes that in order for robots to truly integrate into production and living environments, in addition to safety, trustworthiness is also crucial. Therefore, they fully consider the user experience when designing, and are committed to making it easy for humans to understand and trust these collaborative partners through intuitive design and artificial intelligence technology.

However, it is worth noting that since its establishment, its exclusively developed collaborative robot has never appeared in any public occasion. No photos of the robot can be found on the company's official website or other media channels. The outside world can only guess what it looks like and what technical route it adopts.

The company once said in an interview that it kept its product designs secret in order to protect its innovative advantages and prevent imitation by its peers.

According to limited information, Poter's robot is less than 2m tall, can bear a maximum weight of 34kg, the base is capable of omnidirectional movement through four wheels, and adopts a steering drive design, as well as a central structure that can grab and place handbags and boxes around the warehouse. The robot can also engage and move carts with a payload of up to 680kg around. But how the robot manipulates the cart remains a mystery.

In order to significantly reduce hardware costs, Cobot also uses about 70% off-the-shelf parts, and uses software and machine learning to tune it to give it intelligent navigation and task learning capabilities. This "assembly + intelligence" approach allows Cobot to control the overall cost of the robot while ensuring that its functions and performance are ahead of its competitors.

Poter is also confident that his collaborative robot system is different from current mobile robot and humanoid robot competitors.

Capital "Money Magnet"

Although Collaborative Robotics maintains a high level of mystery about its products, it has attracted a lot of capital with its grand blueprint and solid technical foundation.

In 2022, the company first received a $10 million seed round of financing led by Neo, followed by Khosla Ventures, Calibrate Ventures and 1984 Ventures, to expand the team, accelerate R&D and improve the company's infrastructure.

Then in July 2023, it raised another $30 million in Series A funding led by top venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Mayo Clinic, Calibrate, Neo, and 1984.vc. Sequoia Capital's Alfred Lin joined the company's board of directors, and Jeff Wilke, former CEO of Amazon Consumer, Fuel Capital, and MVP Ventures, also joined the company.

“Our vision of a future where robots seamlessly integrate into their surroundings to increase operational efficiency and human potential is now closer than ever before,” Poter said after the Series A funding round. “This funding will accelerate our mission to bring the world’s first truly useful collaborative robot to market.”

Yesterday, Collaborative Robotics won another $100 million in Series B financing, further deepening its funding pool.

In addition to strong financial strength, the Collaborative Robotics camp also gathers top talents from technology giants such as Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, NASA, etc. This team brings together the industry's leading hardware, software and artificial intelligence experts, laying a solid foundation for the development and implementation of collaborative robots.

At the same time as the official announcement of the financing, the company also announced the hiring of former Amazon executive Teresa Carlson as an advisor. With her work background at Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and other companies, Carlson will provide Collaborative Robotics with valuable experience in scaling and industry transformation.

Last words

With the advancement of artificial intelligence and automation, collaborative robots may reap the next "blue ocean of opportunity". According to data from Markets and Markets Research, the global collaborative robot market is expected to reach US$11.8 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 35.2%.

Compared with other types of robots, the biggest highlight of collaborative robots is that they can collaborate and complement with humans, thereby greatly improving efficiency and reducing costs. They can combine the advantages of automation with human wisdom and play an important role in many fields such as manufacturing, logistics, and medical care.

However, although the collaborative robot market is currently in a serious state of involution, it is still in its infancy in terms of product development, and most products have shortcomings such as single functions and limited intelligence. Collaborative Robotics hopes to launch the next generation of collaborative robots that integrate automation, artificial intelligence and human-machine interaction, thereby driving the entire industry forward.

Judging from its capital strength, technological level and business model, this startup company led by Amazon Robotics "veterans" has certain advantages, but whether it can become a "newcomer" in the field of collaborative robots remains to be seen.