Robohub.org
 

January fundings are off to a great start!


by
02 February 2015



share this:
sarcos-exoskeleton_800_613_80

Rethink Robotics, Xenix, Rapyuta, Perceptron, Skydio, Sarcos and JIBO have all announced substantial fundings for a wide range of robotic ventures. Plus there are some new funders joining the fray.

Andreessen Horowitz lead a $3M financing of Skydio, a Silicon Valley startup developing collision avoidance AI systems for drones.

Texas-based XENIX, the germ zapping mobile robot that received a lot of publicity amidst the Ebola news, got $25 million to scale up manufacturing to meet sales demand. A recent Forbes story suggested many additional uses for the disinfection system once it fulfills its hospital orders.

Rapyuta Robotics, a Tokyo startup, raised $3 million to build cloud-connected low-cost multi-robotic systems for indoor and outdoor security applications.

Perceptron, a Michigan vision systems integrator, acquired two small European companies for $15.9 million:

  • Coord3, an Italy-based coordinate measuring machine (CMM) designer and manufacturer
  • And Next Metrology, a Czech Republic CMM software developer

JIBO, the Cambridge-based IndieGoGo social robot phenom that got 4,800 pre-orders and $2.3 million in crowd funding, received a $26.6 Series A equity boost to help them scale up to produce those 4,800, and hopefully many thousand more, JIBOs. Some of the money will be used to provide developers with SDK kits to help jump start JIBO with hundreds of independent apps.

Perhaps the biggest transaction of the month – but the information is presently not available – is the buyback of Sarcos from Raytheon. Salt Lake City-based Sarcos is the company made famous for their development of the colorful XOS-2 military exoskeleton and was then acquired by Raytheon in 2007. In addition to government contracts, Sarcos has also been involved in entertainment robotics such as the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas and the Jurrassic Park ride in Orlando, Florida.

Boston-based Rethink Robotics, of two-armed Baxter robot fame, got a just-in-time Christmas gift (announced in January) of a $26.6 million Series D equity round to sustain the company until it becomes funded through revenues.

Horizon 2020, the commission used to stimulated robotics-related development in the EU, announced their co-funding of 17 robotics-related projects totalling $87 million. Click here to review details of those 17 investments.

Finally, the small group of venture capital companies focusing on robotics and AI, Robolution, Grishin, Andreesen Horowitz, Lux Capital, Drone.VC, Bosch, Bezos, Google and Lemnos Labs, will be joined by two new ones:

  • iRobot has sent up what is expected to be a $25 million fund and has already made its first investment into Paracosm, a Gainsville, FL 3D mapping software and systems developer.
  • The Strategic Robotics Fund, in Charlottesville, VA, will come online sometime in the 2nd quarter.


tags: , ,


Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.
Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.





Related posts :



Researchers are teaching robots to walk on Mars from the sand of New Mexico

  02 Sep 2025
Researchers are closer to equipping a dog-like robot to conduct science on the surface of Mars

Engineering fantasy into reality

  26 Aug 2025
PhD student Erik Ballesteros is building “Doc Ock” arms for future astronauts.

RoboCup@Work League: Interview with Christoph Steup

and   22 Aug 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup League focussed on industrial production systems.

Interview with Haimin Hu: Game-theoretic integration of safety, interaction and learning for human-centered autonomy

and   21 Aug 2025
Hear from Haimin in the latest in our series featuring the 2025 AAAI / ACM SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants.

AIhub coffee corner: Agentic AI

  15 Aug 2025
The AIhub coffee corner captures the musings of AI experts over a short conversation.

Interview with Kate Candon: Leveraging explicit and implicit feedback in human-robot interactions

and   25 Jul 2025
Hear from PhD student Kate about her work on human-robot interactions.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up part 2

  24 Jul 2025
Find out what participants got up to during the second half of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.

#RoboCup2025: social media round-up 1

  21 Jul 2025
Find out what participants got up to during the opening days of RoboCup2025 in Salvador, Brazil.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence