Robot Investments: MoonBots, DishBots and STEMBots All Score Funding

Happy Fourth of July week, everyone! Before you head off to watch fireworks, eat a lot of food, hit the beach, or just take your mind off robots for a few days, let’s catch up on the latest robot investments from the past few weeks.

Robots across vertical markets

Lots of robot companies continue to find funding across industries, which always makes me happy because it gives me something to write about.

Cobalt Robotics, which develops mobile security robots that work with remote security guards, scored $35 million in funding to help with its nationwide expansion efforts. You can read more here, as well as an interview we did with CEO Travis Deyle last year. An RBR50 2019 honoree, Cobalt is approaching the market in two cool ways – with a robots-as-a-service model, and by supporting human workers through the use of specially trained remote guards. We’re not talking Robocop here.

Dishcraft Robotics, which develops a dishwashing robot aimed at commercial kitchens, recently came out of stealth mode and publicly showed off its concept. The company also raised $20.3 million in funding, according to this SEC Form D report.

We don’t really cover the educational robotics market too much, but there were two recent investments/transactions worth noting. First, iRobot announced it had acquired Root Robotics for its STEM-based coding robot for an undisclosed amount. The company plans to integrate the robot into its own educational robotics efforts, according to CEO Colin Angle (click here for our recent interview with Angle).

Second, ROYBI secured $4.2 million for its AI-enabled educational robot, which uses machine-learning technology to deliver content to children based on their learning ability. With more than 500 lessons, stories and songs that continually update, the company said is “gearing up to have a significant impact on the early education industry,” with the goal of being in as many homes and schools as possible over the next few years.

So now that we have robots helping our kids, washing our dishes, securing our office spaces and all of the other tasks in the world, what’s left? Let’s go to the moon! Astrobotic is on the case – not only is it developing robot moon landers, but this week it also earned a $5.6 million contract from NASA to develop an autonomous lunar rover. Yep, the moon buggy is going robotic! Read more here.

Other recent investments

Check out these other transactions in the robotics space – click the links if you want to read more about the investments or learn about the technology: