Nimble Launches Robotic 3PL Service to Enable 2-Day or Less Delivery
Nimble, an autonomous logistics and AI robotics company, has announced it raised $65 million in Series B financing, with the goal of building a nationwide network of next-generation autonomous 3PL fulfillment centers. The funding round was led by Cedar Pine, with participation from existing investors DNS Capital, GRS Ventures, and Breyer Capital. The company has raised $115 million in total capital.
Nimble said its intelligent robotic fulfillment systems will autonomously pick, pack and ship e-commerce orders while reducing warehouse size by up to 75%. Nimble’s network of robotic warehouses will provide brands 96%+ U.S. population coverage in 1-2 days and click-to-collect savings of up to 40% compared to legacy 3PL providers.
“Finding and retaining warehouse labor, while meeting a 2-day delivery standard, is our customer’s number one operational problem. Brands want to leverage robotics and automation solutions to address this issue but are often challenged by the economics. Our autonomous fulfillment centers and 3PL service will give brands access to state-of-the-art robotic fulfillment systems in a cost-effective way without large upfront investment,” said Simon Kalouche, the founder and CEO of Nimble.
“Many companies are working to incrementally automate the warehouse. They’re taking legacy old-school warehouse concepts that were designed around the ergonomics, safety and productivity of people and trying to automate each manual process one step at a time. We believe that approach leads to a suboptimal solution design – one with marginal gains and very high integration costs which ultimately dilutes the ROI. At Nimble, we’ve built intelligent robots that automate the hardest manual task in the warehouse, the unit-picking and packing process. Rather than inefficiently retrofitting warehouses that were designed for people, we’re completely reimagining and reinventing the warehouse to be conducive to robots – where robots can go and what robots can do. This first-principles approach unlocks a completely new type of autonomous warehouse that’s simpler, smaller, faster and more efficient than the best warehouses in the world today,” Kalouche added.
“With E-commerce and warehouse automation continuing to exhibit incredible growth, we were attracted to Nimble’s industry leading AI robotic technology and 3PL fulfillment capabilities,” said Stephen Weiss of Cedar Pine LLC.. “Our robust due diligence process showed that Nimble has a clear technology lead on the incumbents and has an extraordinary opportunity to be the next generation leader in the industry.”
For more details on Nimble, visit its website here.
