Covariant raises $40 million to bring robots to low-tech industries

Covariant today announced the close of a $40 million series B funding round to bring its robotic control systems to additional industries and create more systems capable of picking, placing, and unloading objects in warehouses. Until now, Covariant has focused its efforts on ecommerce picking robots in highly automated warehouses. It may be best known for its work in robotic grasping, the task of picking up objects with a robotic hand or gripper. The startup -- whose founders who met at OpenAI and University of California, Berkeley -- has raised $67 million, to date. After emerging from stealth earlier this year with support from deep learning luminaries like Geoffrey Hinton, Jeff Dean, and Yann LeCun, Covariant stated that the Covariant Brain system is capable of picking and packing some 10,000 items with 99% accuracy. Robotics manufacturer ABB signed a partnership with Covariant in February, following a picking and sorting test held by ABB last year in which Covariant outperformed 20 other systems.