Chef Robotics Will Assemble Your Frozen Meal for $135k
Skild raises $300M, Egrowcery adds AI recipes, Serve's West Hollywood hot spots
This week’s edition is full of big numbers: $135k (per year) for one particular robot, $300 million for a hot new robotics startup, and then a whopping $2 billion for the latest fund aiming to invest in AI. Read on for all the details!
Chef Robotics Reveals Food Prep Automations
Chef Robotics has been operating in stealth for years, but last week the San Francisco-based company revealed that its machines have been quietly prepping meals for brands like Sunbasket, Chef Bombay and Amy’s Kitchen. That focus on frozen / packaged meals is no accident, with CEO Rajat Bhageria finding that those sorts of operators have the right throughput and product mix to really make use of his company’s AI-learning-powered robotic arms, which aid with scooping, picking, sorting, placing and more. A simple, one-armed system is set to cost under $135,000 per year.
Egrowcery Adds AI-Powered Recipes
Supermarket ecommerce platform provider eGrowcery has a new trick up its sleeve: AI powered shoppable recipes. The new modules lets hungry shoppers find personalized recipes, based on their tastes and location, before easily adding the items to their cart for pickup or delivery. In its release, eGrowcery touts a recipe for “Fresh and Simple Peach Salsa with Cinnamon Sugar Chips” and we gotta say, if that’s the best computers can do, humans are probably safe for a while… Competitor Instacart has had shoppable recipes since 2022, and recently allowed for integrations with partners like the New York Times.
Skild Raises $300 Million
Well this is definitely the big fundraising news of the week: Pittsburgh-based Skild just closed on a $300 million Series A, at an impressive $1.5 billion valuation. Skild is creating an all purpose system that features embodied intelligence, meaning it can learn and react to the outside world on its own. It pairs its “Brain” learning system with a mobile manipulation platform, creating machines it plans to put into work settings of all sorts.
PARTNER | Locale Reinvents Food Delivery
Microwave meals have long promised huge time savings but have always been a let down when it comes to quality. Locale is rethinking this and instead of making food in a factory, partners with California's top restaurants to create microwavable versions of their dishes. Meals are produced in restaurants, then packaged in special, airtight packaging so they stay fresh for a full week in a fridge. All meals are $11. They've attracted a lot of buzz, raising $14M from Andreessen Horowitz and serving thousands of busy Bay Area professionals. Turns out their CEO is a fan of this newsletter and agreed to give our subscribers a week of free lunch to try it out.
Go to shoplocale.com and use code: OTTOMATEXLOCALE50 for $50 off.
Do Delivery Bots Improve Infrastructure?
A number of sidewalk delivery robotics companies have touted the concept that because their machines are constantly assessing the state of cities’ roads and sidewalks, they can give feedback on missing ramps or broken asphalt to civic leaders and DOTs, who will then patch up the broken infrastructure. While that may sound like a happy outcome for the humans that also use the sidewalk, a new report suggests that it’s only actually happened once, with James Madison University adding curb ramps at a few intersections before Starship began operations. In reporting the story, AfroLA’s Maylin Tu secured a copy of Serve’s monthly report to the City of West Hollywood, revealing its delivery activity in the busy municipality.
In Other News
How to get your robot a starring role. Cartken’s Anjali Naik reveals plans for company’s recent funding. Starbucks updates Just Walk Out tech in NYC. Tesla’s self-driving software prioritizes improvements to Elon Musk’s routes over those of regular drivers. Walmart builds out automated distribution centers. Amazon debuts Rufus AI assistant. ConverseNow buys Valyant AI for drive-thru chat tech. Index Ventures raises $2 billion to invest in AI. Tour CaliExpress’ Pasadena robo-restaurant.