Locus Robotics Raises $150M in Series E Funding, Hits $1B Valuation
February 17, 2021
Locus Robotics has announced raising $150 million in Series E funding, led by Tiger Global Management and BOND. The round builds on support from existing investors, including Scale Venture Partners and Prologis Ventures. The new investment brings the autonomous mobile robot company’s valuation to $1 billion.
“This new round of funding marks an important inflection point for Locus Robotics,” said Rick Faulk the CEO of Locus Robotics. “Warehouses facing ongoing labor shortages and exploding volumes are looking for flexible, intelligent automation to improve productivity and grow their operations. Locus is uniquely positioned to drive digital transformation in this enormous global market.”
The company said it will use the new investment to further expand its market opportunities around the globe and support ongoing research and development to grow and enhance its warehouse technology solutions.
“Locus’s innovative mix of proven technology, flexible design, and seamless scalability makes it an ideal choice to lead the digital transformation of the warehouse,” said Griffin Schroeder, partner at Tiger Global. “Facing rapidly growing e-commerce volumes, rising labor costs, and increasingly demanding customers, warehouse operators are seeking an automation solution that is flexible, scalable, and just works.”
“The logistics industry is facing huge challenges as it struggles to cope with rapid increases in demand, and at the same time severe labor shortages,” said Ash Sharma, managing director at Interact Analysis, a market research firm covering the intelligent automation sector. “Warehouses are massively under-penetrated today, but increasingly operators are seeing the huge benefits that warehouse robotics such as the Locus solution can bring. As a result, we expect that over a million warehouse robots will be installed over the next four years and the number of warehouses using them will grow ten-fold.”
Locus’s proven, innovative, multi-bot solution for warehouse fulfillment incorporates collaborative, autonomous mobile robots that significantly improve productivity and deliver powerful, actionable business intelligence. Locus’s strategic partnerships with industry-leading warehouse software companies leverage a powerful synergy that speeds systems integration and deployment.
“As businesses increasingly look for ways to deliver productivity and operational efficiencies into their supply chain, it has become critical that providers deliver on the promise of speed and reliability in their technology deployments,” said John Santagate, VP of Robotics at Körber Supply Chain. “Through our strategic partnership with Locus Robotics, we continue to collaborate and innovate in order to deliver rapid results by driving down the time it takes from the decision to use of Locus Robots in the warehouse.”
Locus customers worldwide include CEVA Logistics, DHL, Material Bank, Boots UK, GEODIS, Port Logistics Group, Verst Logistics, Radial, and others, who are doubling or tripling their fulfillment productivity with near-100% accuracy while saving on operating expenses, and enhancing employee morale and safety.
Locus’s patented, proprietary software and intuitive user interface seamlessly integrates into both existing and new warehouse environments improving the efficiency of both inbound (“putaway”) and outbound (“picking”) fulfillment. Patented technology automatically recognizes workers, and the robot’s large screen displays information in the worker’s preferred language, facilitating greater productivity and reduced error rates, the company said. Its “Gamification” feature displays individual performance statistics to help motivate workers to greater achievement. The Locus solution includes real-time analytics, dashboards, and reporting to customers to maximize productivity and support continuous improvement in the warehouse.
