Miso Robotics Raises $35M in Latest Crowdfunding Round

The company has raised nearly $60 million through the crowd.

Miso Robotics closed out its latest equity crowdfunding at the tail of last week, having raised another $35 million from more than 8,000 investors. The company posted an announcement about the round closing on Linkedin over the weekend. Wavemaker Labs’ (Miso’s parent/incubator) CFO Kevin Morris chimed in on the business social network to say that Miso has now raised close to $60 million in equity crowdfunding.

Miso’s announcement closes out what has been a busy Fall season of crowdfunding for Wavemaker companies: Piestro raised $5 million, Bobacino raised $1.44 million, and Future Acres brought in $1.6 million.

---

---

But Wavemaker isn’t done with crowdfudning quite yet. The company recently put a twist on its fundraising by forming joint ventures that will go out to crowdfund on their own. Piestro and 800 Degrees formed 800° GO this month and are looking to raised $10 million, while Wavemaker and restaurant platform C3 formed Nommi, a fully autonomous, standalone kitchen kiosk startup, which is looking to raise $20 million from the crowd.

Crowdfunding is popular for food robot startups (Blendid is closing out its latest round) because it allows companies to raise capital without the pressure to scale that comes with traditional VC money. Food robots also benefit from a pretty straightforward pitch to everyday investors: e.g. a pizza vending machine, a smoothie robot, etc.

Additionally, companies that crowdfund say that they are able to create an army of investor/acolytes who will go out and market for the company. This big pool of investors also typically has location managers and potential franchisees that can help widen the top of the company’s sales funnel.

Miso’s fundraise probably got a little bit of a boost over the last month as the company announced Flippy 2, the new version of its cooking robot, as well as a deal with Inspire Brands (parent of Buffalo Wild Wings).

---