Locus Robotics, a maker of autonomous mobile robots for fulfillment and distribution warehouses, has raised $117 million in Series F funding, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and G2 Venture Partners.
As part of the financing, Mark Midle, managing director, Goldman Sachs, and Zach Barasz, partner, G2 Venture Partners, will join the Locus’ board of directors, bringing their unique industry perspectives and insights to further guide Locus’s next stage of growth and global expansion.
Midle says: “Locus has established itself as an innovative, high-quality market leader for flexible automation in the massive warehouse fulfillment and distribution market.
“Our investment reflects our view that Locus has the product offering and the operational excellence required to meet and exceed the market challenges posed by today’s dynamic economic environment.”
Rick Faulk, CEO of Locus Robotics, says: “This new round of funding marks an important inflection point for Locus Robotics as we look toward our next stage of growth, and we strategically chose to bring in investors with a wealth of experience in both public and private markets to advise us as we continue our journey.
“As the rapid digital transformation of the supply chain continues, warehouses increasingly seek flexible, intelligent robotics automation to improve productivity and grow their operations, despite ongoing labor shortages and exploding order volumes.”
The Locus warehouse execution platform disrupts large-scale warehouse fulfillment and distribution with what the startup says is “an industry-leading, intelligent, and dynamically scalable” robotics-driven solution.
Locus says it delivers “2x-3x productivity by seamlessly coordinating both human labor and AMRs to dramatically improve order fulfillment efficiency and workplace ergonomics, while lowering operational costs”.
Zach Barasz of G2 Venture Partners, says: “Locus is clearly a winner in the flexible warehouse robotics space, and the consistency with which the Locus team has executed is extraordinary.
“We are thrilled to be investors in Locus Robotics, and to partner with the leading warehouse execution company in making global supply chains faster, more cost-effective, and more resilient and sustainable.”
With more than 230 sites under contract around the world – some having as many as 500 LocusBots per site – the Locus solution efficiently and seamlessly orchestrates the operation and management of multiple robot form factors, and provides forward-looking, real-time business intelligence, critical for optimizing productivity, proactively managing labor, and managing costs.
Dwight Klappich, analyst, Gartner, says: “By 2026, 75 percent of large enterprises in product-centric businesses will have adopted some form of intralogistics robots in their warehouse operations.
“The lower price of entry and faster time to value of robotics opens the market to more companies that can justify automation … as companies adopt robotics, most organizations will expand and scale their use of robotics within the enterprise, leading to fleet growth.”
Locus partners with the world’s leading warehouse operators to create a powerful synergy that speeds deployment and delivers powerful, actionable business intelligence to optimize warehouse productivity, cost management, and labor management.
Sally Miller, CIO of DHL Supply Chain North America, says: “Our 5-year partnership with Locus has enabled DHL to deliver more resilient, flexible, and scalable supply chain solutions to our customers to support faster delivery, improve operational efficiency, and reduce employee workloads.
“In that time, Locus’s ability to integrate groundbreaking technologies into our operations seamlessly and in a targeted way has been a tremendous success for our customers’ supply chains.”
In September 2022, Locus reached a major milestone with its industry-first 1 billionth pick. It took Locus 1,542 days to pick its first 100 million units and just 40 days for the last 100 million picks. Locus robots now average more than three million picks per day around the world.
Locus counts more than 90 customers worldwide, including CEVA Logistics, DHL, Material Bank, Boots UK, GEODIS, Ryder, Verst Logistics, Radial, and others, who are consistently doubling and tripling their fulfillment productivity, with “near-100 percent accuracy”, using the Locus solution.
Also participating in the Series F round were Stack Capital Group, Next47, Stafford Capital Partners, HESTA, Newton Investment Management North America, Gray’s Creek Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Hercules Capital, BOND, and Scale Venture Partners.
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