Berkshire Grey raises $263 million for industrial robots

Industrial robots and warehouse automation are lucrative intermingling markets, and one needn't look further for evidence than Lexington, Massachusetts-based Berkshire Grey. The company, which combines AI and robotics to automate omnichannel fulfillment for retailers, ecommerce, and logistics enterprises, today announced that it secured a mammoth $263 million in series B funding financing from SoftBank with participation from Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Canaan. CEO Tom Wagner says the fresh capital will fuel the startup's global expansion, acquisitions, and team growth. "With our intelligent robotic automation, our clients see faster and more efficient supply chain operations that enable them to address the wants of today's savvy consumer," said Wagner. Berkshire Grey develops AI-imbued, cloud-hosted software that leverages a custom framework to achieve continuous improvement. It logs real-time data to inform future decisions and generate intelligent product-handling and process-operating behaviors, such that each system learns from its own activities as well as other systems within a facility or from deployments across the client network.