Osaro, a San Francisco startup that makes robotic arms for ecommerce picking as well as vision and control software that can be integrated with other robotic solutions, has raised $16 million in a series B round, according to various reports.
The round was led by King River Capital, along with Alpha Intelligence Capital, Founders Fund, Pegasus Tech Ventures, GiTV Fund and existing and strategic investors, bringing the total raised to $29.3 million since its 2015 founding. Osaro cofounder and CEO Derik Pridmore told VentureBeat the funds will be used to support hiring, international deployment and R&D efforts.
Some notable investors in Osaro include Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Peter Thiel, founder of Paypal and co-founder of Palantir as well as the first investor in Facebook, and Sean Parker, creator of Napster and Facebook’s first president.
Osaro also announced that Kevin Pope, formerly of Applied Digital Access, Mahi Networks and Calix joined the company as vice president of engineering, and will work on expansion efforts.
Pridmore, an MIT graduate, said Osaro’s deep learning algorithms based on artificial intelligence is a key differentiator, allowing its picking arms to quickly learn new tasks. Its AI-powered vision and control software also lets companies integrate it with existing robotic solutions.
The company deployed its first solution, Osaro Pick, in Japan in early 2018.