Warehouse robotics provider GreyOrange raises $110M

The world of warehouse robotics is heating up, and investors are taking note.

GreyOrange, a provider of automated robotic fulfillment solutions and inventory optimization software, announced Wednesday that it had secured $110 million via growth financing in a round led by Mithril Capital Management with participation from Blackrock.

The company said that it would use the funding to fuel global expansion, increased headcount and greater adoption of its fulfillment platform in warehouses, distribution centers and retail stores. GreyOrange counts big names like Walmart, H&M and GXO Logistics as its clients.

“As e-commerce sales soar, brands face a stark reality: Embrace automation or cede customers to the competition. We orchestrate fulfillment and optimize inventory in a complex global supply chain environment for more companies that ship millions of items each day than any other player in the market outside of Amazon,” said GreyOrange co-founder and CEO Samay Kohli.

Kohli continued, “This growth financing enables us to rapidly deliver our premium solution to meet the expansion demand from existing customers, rapidly onboard our high volume of new customers, reach new partners and accelerate our unique product road map with an expanded suite of software solutions and predictive analytics.”

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GreyOrange’s fulfillment platform is two-pronged. The company provides fulfillment hardware in the form of the Ranger Robot series, its suite of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs). It features several different models that work in concert to enable things like goods-to-person picking and automated conveyance and sortation.

The company’s AMRs are powered by its proprietary GreyMatter software, which uses machine learning insights to optimize inventory movement and fulfillment within warehouses, fulfillment centers and retail settings. That allows GreyOrange’s platform to integrate across all of a retailer’s fulfillment nodes.

The automation provider also recently rolled out gStore, a mobile SaaS application that can turn retail stores into fulfillment centers for online orders using real-time digital management of in-store inventory.

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“Demand for the GreyOrange omnichannel fulfillment platform continued to increase consistent with our high expectations as retailers come to terms with the immediate necessity of robotic automation in fulfillment,” said Ajay Royan, managing general partner at Mithril Capital Management. We are particularly excited about the expansion underway with GreyOrange’s SaaS applications, such as gStore.”

“The leading brands and retailers we spoke with that use the GreyOrange platform to transform their fulfillment centers and enhance the work environment for their associates experienced substantial productivity improvements,” added Brad Pritchard, managing director and head of venture lending at BlackRock.

Solutions like GreyOrange’s are gaining traction during a time when labor is hard to find. According to a survey of 3PLs by Inbound Logistics, nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents said that finding, training and retaining qualified labor is an important challenge. AMRs and other automated solutions have helped some operators fill the gap by supplementing some of that labor.

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Source: freightwaves - Warehouse robotics provider GreyOrange raises $110M
Editor: Jack Daleo