Covariant, an artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics company, has raised an additional US$75, (£60.1m) in Series C funds, which brings its total reported funding to US$222m (£178m).
Some of the returning investors include Radical Ventures and Index Ventures, with these co-leading the round; new investors included Gates Frontier Holdings, AIX Ventures and Northgate Capital.
The funding will be used to develop technology that can support logistics providers to deploy robotic picking quickly and without disruption to their current operations, according to Covariant.
“The leading companies have turned to AI Robotics to automate their most manual operations in order to decrease labor costs, increase throughput and control profitability,” said Peter Chen, chief executive officer, Covariant.
“The past year for Covariant has been incredible with six times growth in 2022 – and we are just getting started. This infusion of new capital allows us to scale even faster, ensuring more retailers can automate more parts of their fulfilment networks to remove manual bottlenecks, handle fluctuating demand and better prepare for ever-changing business needs.”
Since its initial Series C in 2021, Covariant has taken its AI platform – named the Covariant Brain – and applied it to piece-picking and case-picking applications that traditionally represent manual warehouse operations.
The company’s product portfolio also includes order sortation, item induction, good-to-person order picking, kitting and depalletisation solutions – all of which are powered by its AI platform.
“Covariant has proven it’s the world’s leading AI Robotics company, with AI enabling the successful deployment of robots at scale to secure global supply chains,” said Jordan Jacobs, managing partner of Radical Ventures.
“That helps brands improve consumer trust, retailer confidence, and profitability, even in a time of economic uncertainty.”
