AMP Robotics, a Denver, Colorado-based startup creating robotic systems
that sort recyclable material, this morning announced that it has closed
a $16 million series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. BV, Closed
Loop Partners, Congruent Ventures, and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners
(an infrastructure firm spun out of Sidewalk Labs and backed by
Alphabet and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan) also participated in
the round, which brings AMP Robotics’ total raised to nearly $20 million
following a seed round totaling $3.5 million.
The news comes just over a month after AMP Robotics installed 14 of its AI-guided
robots at Single Stream Recyclers in Florida — the single largest
global deployment in the recycling industry, the company claims —
following deployments at facilities in California, Colorado, Indiana,
Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and
elsewhere in the U.S. CEO Matanya Horowitz said the newfound capital
will bolster AMP Robotics’ operations in the nearly $12.26 billion waste sorting robotics market and drive product research and development.
"Our new partners at Sequoia have a history of building category-defining
businesses, and we are deeply excited to be executing on this vision
with their experience, along with our existing world-class consortium of
investors,” said Horowitz, who founded AMP Robotics in 2015. “We are
perfectly positioned to expand the scope of our technology and the
geographies where we do business, furthering our mission to change the
fundamental economics of recycling and help make the circular economy
possible.”
AMP Robotics asserts its platform delivers higher and more consistent
pick rates than typical manual processes and that it offers holistic
monitoring of material streams without requiring retrofitting. It’s
modular in design, enabling facilities mangers to adapt it to existing
workflows, and it’s tailored to individual brands and SKUs of recyclable
objects. To this end, AMP Robotics’ products can process not only
metals, batteries, capacitors, plastics, PCBs, wires, cartons,
cardboard, cups, aluminum, and thin film, but also materials made of
metal, mixed wood, asphalt, bricks, concrete, and mixed plastics.
AMP Cortex, AMP Robotics’ robotics control system, leverages a
combination of AI algorithms and physical robots to orchestrate sorting,
picking, and placing tasks. A three-armed picker machine with an
adaptable frame area and height sits over a conveyor belt, held in place
by a moveable steel frame. It’s fed data from AMP Neuron, which uses
computer vision to distinguish visual features and self-improves by
processing “millions” of images in the cloud across AMP Robotics’
network, such that it’s able to more accurately sort objects and learn
new classes of materials while adapting to packaging design and lighting
changes.
All that data feeds into AMP Insights, an online visualization tool
that monitors material stream activity and performance. Real-time
notifications sent via text and email keep managers abreast of
goings-on, including potential equipment issues and hazards. And AMP
Insights tracks key commodities to determine things like material
composition per bale, known value created or lost on residual lines, and
per-hauling load.
“We are excited to partner with AMP because their technology is
changing the economics of the recycling industry,” said Sequoia partner
Shaun Maguire, who plans to join the company’s board of directors. “Over
the last few years, the industry has had their margins squeezed by
labor shortages and low commodity prices. The end result is an industry
proactively searching for cost-saving alternatives and added
opportunities to increase revenue by capturing more high-value
recyclables, and AMP is emerging as the leading solution.”
Source. Venture Beat, Kyle Wiggers, November 14, 2019
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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.
Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.
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