Locus Robotics announces $26M in Series C investment

Company wants to use money to focus on accelerating production of warehouse fulfilment robots

Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR) producer Locus Robotics (www.locusrobotics.com) raised $26M in Series C funding. The company says that it will use the proceeds to scale production of its multi-bot solution for warehouse fulfillment, as well as for expansion of its sales and marketing efforts, both in North America, and internationally.

Participants in the round include Zebra Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Zebra Technologies, and Scale Venture Partners, which led the Company's Series B round in 2017.

The Series C investment brings Locus's total funding to more than $66 million since the company's launch. Enthusiasm for investment has been helped by sales to retail/e-tail, third party logistics (3PL), distribution, and industrial specialty customers across North America in 2018. Customers, include DHL, GEODIS, Port Logistics Group, Verst Logistics and Radial. Locus Robotics' multi-bot solution operate collaboratively with human pickers.

"Zebra Technologies has a longstanding mission of driving productivity in logistics and the supply chain," said Tony Palcheck, Managing Director of Zebra Ventures. "We invest in technologies that will help our customers increase operational efficiency and meet their requirements for on-time delivery. Locus has quickly established itself as a leader in warehouse automation, and the company is a natural fit with our enterprise intelligence vision in the warehouse market."

"The continued, rapid growth of the warehouse industry and a tight labour market have placed tremendous pressure on warehouse operators to find a scalable, cost-effective way to meet increasing productivity and efficiency demands," said Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics. "We have seen a massive uptick in demand for the flexible automation incorporated into Locus's multi-bot solution, which is uniquely suited to address these challenges. Not only is our solution proven to dramatically improve productivity and drive down costs, but it is also a source of scalable labour that can be adapted to meet the demands of numerous product and customer profiles. This new funding will enable us to scale to meet growing demand for our revolutionary solution worldwide."

"The accelerated adoption of robotics technology worldwide is driving significant demand for autonomous mobile robots, and Locus brings to market a unique solution that provides an easy-to-deploy, flexible, and scalable approach to autonomous mobile robot-enabled fulfillment," said John Santagate, Research Director at IDC. "Locus's multi-robot solution is unique in the market as it allows human workers in the fulfillment process to execute to many orders as they can interact with multiple robots that are working independently of one another at any given time.  The partnership with Zebra is also quite interesting as it combines a long-time leader in supply chain technology with an emerging vendor in a high growth market."

Locus recently added an accessory power port to their autonomous mobile robot, the LocusBot, which features a Zebra printer integrated onto its robotic platform, and showcased a Zebra wireless handheld scanner integrated with Locus's new putaway functionality.

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