Robco successfully completes its Series B financing round and wins Lightspeed Venture Partners as an investor. The Munich startup receives €39 million from Lightspeed and other investors to advance its development and growth trajectory. Former Apple and Nvidia investor Sequoia Capital, Kindred Capital, and Promus Ventures are also participating in the current financing round. The newly raised capital will be invested particularly in expanding sales and product development.
Simple and efficient programming
Robco was founded in 2020 by Roman Hölzl, Paul Maroldt, and Constantin Dresel. The founders previously worked together as research associates at the Chair of Robotics and AI at TUM. The startup has specialized in developing flexibly adaptable robot hardware kits for various use cases in mid-sized manufacturing – such as machine loading and unloading or palletizing.
With this, the Munich startup aims to enable small and medium-sized manufacturing companies to operate automated robots easily. The robots are configured and operated for their respective application using the company’s own cloud software platform. Thanks to the Munich company’s software kit, industrial robots can be programmed simply and efficiently. Roman Hölzl, CEO and co-founder of Robco, explains:
“Continuously advancing our modular robot platform for industrial use is crucial for addressing current and future challenges in business and society. Today, our robots can already be set up, programmed, and managed with software and AI support. The next step is to make industrial robots even more autonomous and intelligent in their operating environment.”
He adds:
“With our Robco Autonomy approach, we are focusing on even deeper AI implementation in our software so that robots can independently perceive their environment, analyze it, and plan and execute actions according to the ‘sense-reason-act’ principle in the near future.”
Robot deployment no longer reserved for large corporations
Alex Schmitt, partner at Lightspeed, says:
“The use of robotics in industrial environments was previously almost exclusively reserved for large corporations with the corresponding financial and personnel resources. High costs and enormous complexity made them partially unaffordable for small and medium-sized companies and were difficult to manage. Robco has already achieved a major breakthrough in this field with its developments. We see enormous potential here both technologically and commercially for the German as well as international market. Now it’s about optimally promoting this potential and thus making robot automation solutions accessible to all companies.”
And Roman Hölzl adds:
“We are only at the beginning of a far-reaching automation journey and want to become a leader in Europe in the field of modular robot automation for mid-sized companies. Robco is uniquely positioned with its easy-to-implement robots that deliver positive ROI from day one. We see ourselves as an extension of companies in automating their production and supporters in their transformation toward Industry 4.0. The fact that a venture capital powerhouse like Lightspeed is supporting our next steps with a €39 million financing round shows us we are on the right track – and is an incredible motivational boost for all of us to take our solutions to the next level.”
