Photoneo Brightpick Raises Extra $19M to Complete $40M Fund Round
Kentucky-based Photoneo Brightpick Group has announced it raised an additional $19 million to complete a $40 million Series B funding round. The group is the parent company of Photoneo, which develops robotic vision sensors and intelligence software, and Brightpick, which develops warehouse automation solutions for e-commerce and grocery order fulfillment operations. The new funding raises the group’s total capital raised since inception to $53 million.
The group includes more than 300 employees and is used in more than 5,000 technology installations across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This includes companies such as General Motors, Volkswagen and KUKA. The company said the new funding will be used primarily to fund new installations of Brightpick’s warehouse automation solution in the U.S.
The Brightpick offering is an end-to-end robotic system that autonomously picks, consolidates and dispatches orders in large, small, and micro-fulfillment centers. The company said the solution takes a month to deploy, enabling warehouses to reduce their picking labor by 95%, and cut costs for order fulfillment by half. The company said it expects to announce a next-generation order picking solution powered by proprietary machine vision and AI technology in Q1 2023.
“We are seeing extremely strong interest from existing and new customers for Brightpick’s solution because it helps customers cut operating costs and eliminate labor challenges, two relevant concerns in today’s tough economic environment,” said Jan Zizka, CEO and co-founder of Photoneo Brightpick Group. “These new funds will help us accelerate the pace of deployment of our solution and scale our U.S. presence.”
The new funding round was led by Taiwana Capital, and included follow-on investments by prior Series B lead investors IPM Group and Alpha Intelligence Capital. Additional investors also included H&D Asset Management, Venture to Future Fund and Kolowrat Group.
“Photoneo Brightpick Group has strong leadership, talented engineers and world-class technology that will fundamentally change how online retailers and grocers to order fulfillment in the future,” said Mitch Yang, managing partner at Taiwana Capital. “We look forward to working closely with them in this high-growth phase. In addition, we believe our connections to Taiwan’s ICT (Information and Communications Technology) sectors could add great value to this partnership.”
For more details on the company’s technology, visit the Brightpick website here.
