Sarcos Robotics raises $40 million in Series C funding

Sarcos Robotics, a global leader in the production of robots that augment humans to enhance productivity and safety, announced that it has raised $40 million in an oversubscribed Series C financing round.

The Series C round was led by Rotor Capital, with most of the company’s existing investors participating in the financing.

The Series C funding will be used to begin commercial production of the company’s Guardian XO industrial exoskeleton – the world’s first full-body, battery-powered wearable industrial robot designed to increase strength and endurance – scheduled for commercial release in 2021.

The Guardian XO exoskeleton, which has been under development for more than 20 years, can safely lift up to 200 pounds for extended work sessions and applies to a myriad of industries such as aviation, manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, oil & gas, construction, defense, and others.

“ABI projects the total market value of the global powered exoskeleton market to exceed $11.5 billion by 2030 with full-body, powered industrial exoskeletons comprising almost 50 percent of that amount,” said Rian Whitton, Research Analyst, ABI Research.

“The Sarcos team achieved a significant engineering feat last year by completing the R&D phase of the world’s first battery-powered, full-body industrial exoskeleton – the Guardian XO,” said Ben Wolff, chairman and CEO, Sarcos Robotics.

“This new funding will allow us to achieve our next goal of scaling production and shipping commercial units of the Guardian XO exoskeleton. In addition, we will also advance the development of our ‘smart’ version of the Guardian XO exoskeleton with our Cybernetic Training for Autonomous Robots (CYTAR) artificial intelligence platform, which will enable the robot to augment the operator’s precision and skill to complete specific tasks.”

“Sarcos Robotics is uniquely positioned to solve enormous global workforce challenges, such as reducing the economic and social impact of workplace injuries and solving a portion of the ever-increasing shortage of skilled labor which is forecasted to only get worse over the coming decades as the industrialized workforce ages and fewer young people pursue jobs that require physically demanding work,” said Brian Finn, newly-appointed Sarcos board member.

“While there is no question that automation is solving many of these challenges, there are many jobs across a wide range of industries that don’t involve repetitive tasks in a constrained environment. For these jobs, human intelligence and judgment are essential.

Sarcos is one of the few industrial robotics companies focused on human augmentation rather than human replacement, delivering the economic and safety benefits of automation to those jobs that can’t be automated because of the complexity of the task or the environment.”