Nomagic & Viam Haul in Robotic Millions
Ocado expands, Sanctuary learns touch, Avride hits Japan
Investments are heating up in the robotics space, with tens of millions raised in the past week alone. Meanwhile, the humanoids are on the loose, delivery bots are big in Japan and Amazon wants to meet you at the hospital.
We’ve also got some amazing robotics companies headed to our annual conference, Curbivore, returning to Downtown LA on April 10th and 11th. New partners, including Zoox, Serve Robotics and Hayden AI join Starship, Coco Robotics and many more. Join us!
Nomagic Raises $44M, Viam Closes on $30M
Warsaw, Poland based Nomagic just closed on $44 million in Series B financing, led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD,) with support from Khosla Ventures and Almaz Capital. The company grew 220% in 2024, as it scales its robotic picking solution geared towards logistics and fulfillment. Another automation vanguard, software provider Viam AI, closed a big round: the company’s $30 million Series C was led by Union Square Ventures, with participation from Battery Ventures and Neurone.
Sanctuary & Figure AI Want to Touch Your Kitchen
Fresh from announcing its new VLA model, Figure AI plans to start “alpha testing” its humanoids in homes by the end of this year. Up in Vancouver, Canada, Sanctuary AI announced a new tactile sensor that will enable tele-operated human-like robots to better perform complex, touch-driven tasks, like picking up small, unseen objects.
Ocado Plans Kroger Expansion
Grocery giant Kroger may have closed some of its Ocado-powered automated fulfillment centers in 2024, but that trend looks to be reversing this year. The British automation group plans to open two new centers — in Charlotte and Phoenix — with the supermarket brand by early next year, building off the eight currently in operation. Ocado just posted its financial results for 2024 as well, with revenue growing 14.1% to £3.2 billion ($4.1B) and its loss coming in at £375 million.
Amazon One Heads to the Hospital
Amazon may be struggling with its frictionless checkout solutions in supermarket settings, but now the ecommerce giant is trying its luck in healthcare settings. Amazon One — its palm-scanning check-in and payments system — is headed to NYU Langone Health, in New York City. This is Amazon’s largest third-party deployment to date, which has no connection to a visitor’s healthcare records.
Rakuten Brings Avride to Tokyo
Austin-based Avride’s autonomous delivery robots are now live in central Tokyo, thanks to a new partnership with ecommerce heavyweight Rakuten. The startup, spun out of Yandex, has ten sidewalk bots handling deliveries for the likes of Starbucks and local convenience stores in the Harumi, Kachidoki and Tsukishima neighborhoods.
Avride recently launched in Jersey City with Uber Eats and at The Ohio State University with Grubhub. The latter deployment used to be a market controlled by Cartken, which has since shifted its sights more towards AMR operations. There may be a pattern here, as Cartken also used to have a Japanese deployment with Rakuten. That project was out in the suburbs, while this one is in a dense, central neighborhood, albeit one with easily defined harbor edges, making it clear where service starts and stops.
In Other News
Deutsche Telekom and Perplexity plan AI Phone. Anthropic raises $3.5 billion at $61.5 billion valuation. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson optimistic about national AV framework.