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Image: Daniel Cavazos
AUSTIN, TEXAS – Diligent Robotics, which develops socially intelligent robots, announced today that its hospital robot assistant, Moxi, has moved out of beta and is now available, with a rollout into a Texas hospital starting on Oct. 2, 2019. In addition, the company announced it raised $3 million in additional seed funding to help fuel Moxi’s launch.
The funding round was co-led by True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures, with participation from Next Coast Ventures, Capital Factory, Pathbreaker Ventures, Boom Capital, Grit Ventures, and additional angel investors. The latest round follows two prior funding rounds, including a $2.1 million seed round in January 2018 (led by True Ventures), and $725,000 from the National Science Foundation in the form of a Small Business Innovation Research grant.
Andrea Thomaz (left) and Vivian Chu (right) are co-founders of Diligent Robotics, creator of Moxi (middle).
Founded in 2017, Diligent Robotics is creating a robot with social intelligence and mobile manipulation skills that aims to help humans in their work environments. The Moxi robot was tested in month-long trials at four U.S. hospitals during its beta phase. With that phase completed following positive results, the company said it is now launching Moxi into the market with full-time hospital partners.
“Our vision is to improve the way people think about their work by giving them more time to utilize their unique human skills, and let friendly robot assistants efficiently take care of their chores,” said Andrea Thomaz, CEO and co-founder of Diligent Robotics. “We are proud to have the full support of our past investors as well as new key investors to accelerate the rollout of Moxi robots into hospitals.”
Diligent said the latest funding will support the company’s launch of Moxi, as well as continued investment in product strategy and development in hardware and software.
“Over the last year, Diligent Robotics has made rapid progress in delivering and testing Moxi in multiple hospitals,” said Rohit Sharma, partner at True Ventures and board member for Diligent Robotics. “The team continues to demonstrate unmatched robotics-specific innovation by combining social intelligence and human-guided learning capabilities. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Vivian [Chu, Diligent’s CTO and co-founder] and Andrea as they build a world-class, leading robotics company.”
In addition to this funding round and completing Moxi’s beta phase, Diligent Robotics has reached key milestones in the last year including hiring Josh Tippy, Head of Clinical Integrations. Additionally, Chu received MIT Technology Review’s highly prestigious 35 Under 35 for 2019 award, and Thomaz was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Female Founders in 2019 Building America’s Most Innovative & Ambitious Businesses.
“It is now obvious that robots will improve our quality of life, but only when implemented thoughtfully,” said Sunil Nagaraj, partner at Ubiquity Ventures and newly named board member for Diligent Robotics. “I am lucky to partner with such an experienced and agile team as they use Moxi robots to make hospitals better places for patients, nurses, and doctors.”
