Telexistence
Assembly Line
🦾 Retail robotics startup Telexistence raises $170M
Telexistence Inc., a startup developing artificial intelligence-powered robots for the retail sector, today announced that it has raised $170 million in funding. One of the investors in the Series B round was SoftBank Group Corp. Last month, SoftBank signaled that it plans to step up the pace of its AI investments following a year of limited venture capital activity. The company scaled back its participation in startup funding rounds last year to address market headwinds. Besides SoftBank, Telexistence’s latest raise also included the participation of several other backers. Among them were Airbus Ventures, Monoful Partners, KDDI Open Innovation and Globis Capital Partners.
In FamilyMart stores, the shelves that hold packaged goods are often embedded into the walls. Behind each shelf is a corridor accessible only to employees and a merchandise storage area. When a certain product runs out, employees enter the corridor, pick up new merchandise from the storage area and place it on the shelf. Telexistence’s TX SCARA robot automates the task. It’s a mobile robot arm designed to operate in the employee-only corridor between a store shelf and the merchandise storage area. The TX SCARA can detect when a product is out of stock, pick up new merchandise from the storage area and place it on the relevant part of the shelf.