We are thrilled to announce our investment in Plus One Robotics’ Series B fundraise. Plus One is leading the next generation of warehouse automation with its cutting-edge machine-vision software that enables any robotic-arm hardware to intelligently and autonomously complete manual logistics tasks such as package sortation and depalletization. Furthermore, the Company incorporates a differentiating “human-in-the-loop” element that allows for successful customer deployments starting on day 1 while also improving system performance. This Series B investment underscores our belief that Plus One is a category leader in the automation wave that is sweeping across the supply chain and logistics industry.
Two trends are converging to push warehouse automation to the top of the priority list for companies seeking to adapt to the new paradigm: Covid-19 driving an unprecedented growth in e-commerce while simultaneously the broader logistics industry is suffering an ongoing labor shortage. McKinsey estimated that Covid-19 condensed 10 years worth of e-commerce penetration growth into 3 months, and as consumers increasingly expect 2-day, 1-day, or even same-day shipping, companies are turning to automation in order to handle the surge in demand and expectations for rapid fulfillment. Furthermore, as this demand is growing, the supply of warehouse labor is falling as the industry suffers from high turnover rates. This is exacerbating the need for automation solutions even more, as corporations have an urgent need to replace human labor with robots to complete the extremely manual and monotonous tasks that are driving away the warehouse workers.
While existing warehouse automation technologies are suitable for simple, highly repetitive tasks and handling homogenous packages (i.e. boxes that are the same shape and similar size), they sorely lack the ability to handle dynamic environments with heterogeneous packages (i.e. most logistics facilities). These current solutions must be pre-programmed to complete tasks and are unable to adapt to new situations that arise.
A cohort of new startups has emerged to solve this adaptability challenge using artificial intelligence techniques. However, these new technologies can only get so far in terms of full automation, given that there will always be edge cases where human input is required. Plus One is addressing this by incorporating a “human-in-the-loop” element, where the machine learning model handles the vast majority of cases and only requires remote human intervention for the rare edge instances. This model serves two functional purposes:
Plus One can successfully deploy at customer locations starting on day 1 with minimal ramp up periods.
The rare instances of human intervention further reinforce the machine learning models to be able to handle similar edge cases autonomously in the future.
Plus One’s machine-vision software and its “human-in-the-loop” feedback mechanism also enables industry-leading high accuracy and throughput rates. Customers then enjoy two benefits from Plus One’s solution: cost savings and operational efficiency uplift.
We believe that Plus One Robotics is a category leader for machine vision in the warehouse automation space and, given its existing deployments at blue-chip customers, is already at the forefront of the disruption coming to the industry. Our investment will support Plus One as they further develop their machine-vision software to expand within existing customers and into new customers with additional applications and use-cases. Led by an extremely seasoned team of veteran roboticists with intimate knowledge of how the logistics industry works, Plus One is taking both a pragmatic and technological approach to solving this urgent business challenge, while some competitors are only throwing technology expertise at a practical problem in a very entrenched industry. Erik Nieve’s (co-founder and CEO) extensive 20+ year experience in the industry combined with Shaun Edwards’ (co-founder and CTO) technical expertise from co-writing the widely used ROS instills high confidence that Plus One will continue to lead the charge on warehouse automation. We are excited to join a world-class team as they bring the supply chain and logistics industry to the modern age!