Fox Robotics gains $20M investment round led by BMW i Ventures
Autonomous forklift company targets receiving dock workflows, adds former KUKA executives to its board
Fox Robotics, the autonomous forklift company, recently announced the close of a $20 million oversubscribed funding round led by BMW i Ventures. Additional new investors include Zebra Technologies, Japan Airlines & Translink Innovation Fund, and Foothill Ventures. Existing investors Menlo Ventures, ENIAC Ventures, and SignalFire also participated in the round, the company announced in late October.
Concurrent with the closing of the round, Till Reuter, former CEO of KUKA, and David Fuller, former CTO of KUKA and current CEO of Artificial, will join the company as independent board directors.
Fox Robotics states it is the world’s first intelligent forklift that autonomously services the warehouse receiving dock. Fox’s autonomous forklifts are running around the clock across dozens of customers sites today, and they have been proven out in some of the world’s most demanding environments like DHL Supply Chain, the company added.
“As the COVID-19 pandemic made evident, supply chain resiliency is paramount,” said Peter Anderson-Sprecher, Co-Founder & CEO of Fox Robotics. “We have the ability to deploy our solutions to customers and have them up and running in less than one hour, which has been key to our success as it lets us work closely with our customer-partners and rapidly learn in a live production environment.”
“Supply chain efficiency and resiliency are top of mind for many companies today. Fox Robotics’ autonomous forklifts allow customers to handle loads quicker and safer while increasing overall workplace productivity,” said Kasper Sage, Managing Partner at BMW i Ventures. “We’re excited for Fox Robotics’ next phase of growth, bringing intelligent automation solutions to the global supply chain.”
DHL Supply Chain, the global and North American contract logistics leader within Deutsche Post DHL Group, was Fox’s first customer and is rapidly deploying their technology across their network of warehouses.
“At DHL Supply Chain a key focus has been our Accelerated Digitization Strategy which seeks to nurture and deploy innovative technology solutions at scale. For this program to be successful it is important that we establish strategic partnerships with companies like Fox where we can collaborate to develop solutions that addresses the unique challenges of the logistics industry,” said Sally Miller, CIO, DHL Supply Chain North America. “Over the past three years we’ve worked closely with Fox testing and sharing operational knowledge which has resulted in a product that delivers true value for both our customers and warehouse associates.”
As Fox has continued its rapid growth trajectory, the company is providing its solution to automate some of the world’s most complex logistics environments.
Fox has solved the hardest forklift challenge to date – unloading trailers without modifying the warehouse environment – and has a clear path to automating all pallet movement. Each forklift can be delivered and installed in under one hour, compared to the weeks or months that typical automated guided vehicles take for integration, according to the company.
“Fox is executing today on one of the key visions David [Fuller] and I had always wanted to deliver with KUKA—the automation of the material handling function. At KUKA we successfully optimized the production side with robots, and now Fox is well positioned to do the same thing with pallet movement,” added Till Reuter, former CEO of KUKA, and incoming Board Director at Fox. “It’s almost hard to believe how effective they are even when you see them up and running right in front of you.”
Fox retrofits a standard forklift with sensors and software to enable autonomous material handling operations with precise navigation and robust pallet picking and movement. Deep learning systems use on-board cameras and LiDAR sensors to detect pallets, boxes and other obstacles in real time and enable the forklift to pick pallets out of trailers it is seeing for the first time, Fox Robotics explained.
Zebra Technologies, a global leader in automation solutions for enterprises, is also investing in Fox.
“Zebra Technologies has been an active investor and solution provider to help businesses globally digitize and automate their supply chains and augment front-line workers,” said Tony Palcheck, Managing Director of Zebra Ventures, Zebra Technologies. “Fox has proven its ability to increase resiliency, safety, and drive measurable return on investment, and we look forward to working together with Fox on this next stage of growth.”
