Learnings from recent robotics investment data
Silicon Valley Robotics
Supporting innovation and commercialization of robotics technologies - Robots&Startups at https://249x.substack.com
Robotics investment is approximately the same level as in 2019, in spite of the difficult financial climate. For example, Vinod Khosla just successfully raised a $3 Billion fund and many larger investors are spending more money on early stage companies. The difficulty that investors have raising from LPs in a time of high interest rates is mainly affecting younger and early stage funds.
As you can see from this conservative dataset that I’ve been using since 2010, robotics investment in 2023 is on par with investment in 2019. What has shifted is a move towards fewer transactions and fewer seed or pre-seed transactions. Seed stage and other stage investments are also for larger amounts, reflecting a certain conservatism.
2019 = 1072 transactions, 31% seed stage and total $19,090,331,303 USD invested globally.
2023 (to date) = 796 transactions, 29.5% seed stage and total $18,946,889,422 USD invested globally.
Honestly, fundraising is harder than building hardware! However, something that should give everyone struggling to raise some hope is the sheer number of potential investors that are investing in robotics. For every 100 transactions there are on average 250 investors, and 175-200 are unique. This can range from angel investors, to regional funds, to funds with a specific thesis that matches the market you are in.
If you are currently fundraising, don’t focus on the ‘traditional’ robotics investors because they’ve already placed bets across the board and are likely to consider you competitive to an existing portfolio company of theirs. Dig deeper and focus 95% of your outreach list on less well known investors.
Use databases. Personally I use several and have my own lists. Here are a couple of free or affordable databases: Mercury.com , VCSheet , Fundrs.vc , FounderSuite
Who else do you recommend for robotics startups?
Quick Reads:
Watch lessons in Choreobotics with Catie Cuan - Wired
Zelda Ventures new Pre-Seed Fund - TechCrunch
Amazon’s humanoid warehouse robots will eventually cost only $3 per hour to operate. That won’t calm workers’ fears of being replaced. Business Insider
Amazon Industrial Fund leads Instock seed round for novel fulfillment robots - The Robot Report
Ocado to ramp up use of robotic arms to speed-pack shopping - Financial Times
Gecko Robotics raises $100 million for Defense Tech - Bloomberg
Rightbot, which is developing robots to unload freight, lands investment from Amazon - TechCrunch
Finally a robot dog that doesn’t look like it’s going to kill us all - Business Insider
Q&A with Boston Dybnamics’ Aaron Saunders - Tech Crunch
The Ultimate CES 2024 Guide to the Hottest Parties, Panels and Robots - Forbes
Six robot trends from iREX 2023 - The Robot Report
Reliable Robotics achieves milestone for uncrewed cargo flight - FreightWaves
The limitations of being human got you down? There’s a robot for that - Stanford News
World’s first fully autonomous AI powered restaurant to open in Pasadena - Pasadena Now (Cali-Express by Flippy)
领英推荐
Uber rolls out “robot reindeer” complete with antlers - Axios
Gas-Pumping Robot in China Answers a Question Nobody Asked - TheDrive
Jackery’s autonomous robot has expandable solar panels to produce more clean energy - Designboom
Uber Freight and Torc Robotics form partnership on autonomous trucks - Transport Topics
China issues safety guidelines for autonomous public transport vehicles - Reuters
US sugar beet farmers pioneer autonomous transport from field to factory - Future Farming
Parallel Systems demonstrates autonomous freight car system in Australia - Trains.com
NASA’s Mars robots back in action after ‘solar conjunction’ - Space.com
UCCE Advisor Bruno Guides, Learns From Dairies Switching to Milking Robots - Morning AgClips
Robot dogs and AI: Is this the future of EV factories? - WSJ
Japan gears up for autonomous mobility as companies put their tech to the test - Japan-Forward
Kodiak launches its first autonomous military prototype vehicle - Reuters
Autonomous electric truck transports GE appliances - Clean Technica
Social robots leave students wanting, education researchers find - Phys.org
MIT engineers design a robotic replica of the heart’s right chamber - MIT News
DARPA-funded ‘Inchworm’ robots could help us build moon bases. Here’s how. - Space.com
Meet NeRmo, the mouse robot with backbone - Popular Science
Robotics Events:
12-14 Dec - IEEE Humanoids in Austin TX (incl Build BayMax Workshop!)
20-21 Feb - IEEE Serious Open Source 2024 Mountain View CA
April 2024 - RoboGames and…. Robot Block Party (more news soon!)
Some more robotics conferences
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