Berkeley, California-based AI Robotics company Covariant announced Tuesday, July 27, 2021, that it had successfully raised $80 million in a Series C investment round. The recent funding round brings the total amount raised by the company since its launch to $147 million.
The Series C funding round comes a little over a year after it had raised $40 million in a Series B investment round, states Tech Crunch.
The Series C funding round was led by Index Ventures, a returning investor in the company. Other investors who also participated in the said investment round include Amplify Partners and Radical Ventures.
Apart from the aforementioned investors, Covariant states that it had added new investors to its roster, namely Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and Temasek. Both are global investors.
The funding round was hosted for Covariant’s universal AI designed for robotic manipulation called the Covariant Brain. According to its press release, the product is already in use across various industries, such as pharmaceutical, health and beauty, fashion, grocery, general merchandise, and parcels.
The Covariant Brain works by “draw[ing] on its experiences across settings, verticals, and continents to allow customers from diverse industries to operate robots at human-level autonomy,” said the company in its press release.
In its press release, chief executive officer of the Covariant Peter Chen said that “the Covariant Brain is powering a wide range of industrial robots to manage order picking, putwall, sorter induction… The breadth of use demonstrates the Covariant Brain can help robots of different types to manipulate new objects they’ve never seen before in environments where they’ve never operated.”
As of writing, Tech Crunch reports that the AI Robotics company counts ABB and Bastian, Knapp, and Obeta as some of its customers. The technology is now available in different parts of Asia, Europe, and North America across various markets.
Following the Series C investment round, the company aims to further grow and expand its team. It currently has just under 80 employees working for the company.
However, Tech Crunch states that it had already added high-profile members such as Ally Lynch as its head of marketing, Raghavendra Prabhu as its head of engineering and research, and Sam Cauthen as head of people.
In addition, Covariant expects to use its funding for further research and development for its AI Robotics products. It also aims to allocate a part of its funding for the faster rollout of its AI robotics products to the world.
