Bay Area-based Rapid Robotics at the moment announced a $12 million Series A. The new spherical, led by NEA, brings the corporate’s complete funding as much as $17.5 million. It joins a lately closed seed spherical, introduced approach again in November of final yr. Existing buyers Greycroft, Bee Partners and 468 Capital additionally took half within the spherical.
We famous at that stage that COVID-19 had a large affect on robotics funding. At the very least, the pandemic has served to speed up curiosity in automation, as many “non-essential” employees have been unable to journey to their jobs. At current, manufacturing jobs typically lack the flexibility to carry out remotely.
Rapid notes that the corporate’s tech has been concerned with the manufacturing of some 50 million components over the previous yr, over all kinds of various manufacturing verticals. And, like his predecessor, President Biden has already begun speaking up methods to return manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Of course, formidable because it is likely to be, any plan goes to must be a balancing act between human jobs and automation.
The firm notes the longstanding difficulty with human operators in these roles. “If we don’t solve this problem, U.S. manufacturers will never be able to compete in a global market,” CEO Jordan Kretchmer mentioned in a launch. “It’s really that simple.”
Rapid’s essential worth add right here is ease of use. The firm creates methods designed to stand up and working rapidly.
