GreyOrange, a robotic fulfillment company, has raised $110 million in “comprehensive growth financing”, a majority of which came from Mithril Capital Management and a group of current and new investors, along with separate financing provided by funds and accounts under management by BlackRock.
The growth financing underscores GreyOrange’s technical leadership in a fundamental market shift to robot-enabled automated fulfillment solutions.
GreyOrange reduces operating costs and expedites delivery for global retail industry leaders including Walmart, H&M, COS, Coupang and GXO Logistics.
GreyOrange grew across new customers, applications and geographies while achieving over 170 percent gross retention in contracted revenue from existing customers in 2021.
The GreyOrange fulfillment platform, which integrates across every node in a retailer’s fulfillment network, provides adaptive learning and continuous process automation with high resiliency as well as an ecosystem for third-party software, robotics and hardware application development.
The company’s GreyMatter software utilizes machine learning insights to orchestrate fulfillment operations for the most efficient movement of inventory in a fully integrated, end-to-end solution.
GreyOrange solutions can be installed in as little as 12 weeks to rapidly transform fulfillment with minimal disruption to operations.
Ajay Royan, managing general partner at Mithril Capital Management, says: “GreyOrange is trusted by the biggest names in retail to help them do what they do best, better.
“Demand for the GreyOrange omnichannel fulfillment platform continued to increase consistent with our high expectations as retailers come to terms with the immediate necessity of robotic automation in fulfillment.
“We are particularly excited about the expansion underway with GreyOrange’s SaaS applications, such as gStore, which deliver new and innovative supply chain solutions to discerning consumers across the GreyOrange customer base.”
Brad Pritchard, managing director and head of venture lending at BlackRock Capital Group, says: “The leading brands and retailers we spoke with that use the GreyOrange platform to transform their fulfillment centers and enhance the work environment for their associates experienced substantial productivity improvements.”
GreyOrange will deploy the growth capital to accelerate the company’s technology leadership, continue its global expansion and further support the adoption of GreyOrange’s unique fulfillment platform in warehouses, distribution centres and retail stores.
Furthering the future of omnichannel fulfillment, gStore from GreyOrange is a mobile-first SaaS app that turns stores into tech-enabled, personalized experience hubs for customers as well as dynamic fulfillment centers for online commerce using real-time digital management of in-store inventory.
The gStore software solution deploys either in stores as a standalone solution, or as part of GreyOrange’s ecosystem-wide fulfillment platform.
Samay Kohli, co-founder and CEO, GreyOrange, says: “Our fulfillment platform revolutionizes how the largest and best-known retail brands in the world, such as Walmart and H&M, fulfill their promises to customers, employees and shareholders.
“As ecommerce sales soar, brands face a stark reality: embrace automation, or cede customers to the competition.
“We orchestrate fulfillment and optimize inventory in a complex global supply chain environment for more companies that ship millions of items each day than any other player in the market outside of Amazon.
“This growth financing enables us to rapidly deliver our premium solution to meet the expansion demand from existing customers, rapidly onboard our high volume of new customers, reach new partners and accelerate our unique product roadmap with an expanded suite of software solutions and predictive analytics.”
Innovative retailers are rapidly implementing robotic automation as growing labor shortages, volatile lead times, global supply chain challenges and rising costs create ripple effects in global commerce.
With labor shortages at a record high and projected to grow long-term, 73 percent of third-party logistics companies reported finding, training and retaining qualified labor as their most critical challenge.
Robotic automation mitigates labor shortage challenges while improving the work environment for fulfillment associates as robots take on repetitive tasks and allow smart management teams to implement upskilling programs that support employee satisfaction and retention.
GreyOrange’s fulfillment platform equips retailers to fulfill high volume ecommerce orders 7 times faster and with 50 percent less physical effort.
Indicative of GreyOrange’s market leadership, Walmart recently announced a new high-tech sortable fulfillment center in Rocky View County, Alberta.
The modern facility will be powered by cutting-edge logistics technology to achieve productivity gains with less physical effort.
For the first time at Walmart, innovative robotic technology from GreyOrange will be used at the fulfillment center.
This platform will speed up order fulfillment by using an advanced operating system that will help associates store, pick and sort items by using smart and flexible storage abilities to manage a large and wide variety of inventory.
The result is an order fulfillment process that is quicker, easier and more efficient.
GreyOrange will also use a portion of the debt financing provided by funds and accounts under management by BlackRock to invest in scaling its headcount in key areas, creating 300 jobs across the customer success, sales, marketing, product and engineering teams, with a special focus on roles that deliver exceptional customer experiences.
