Agility Robotics, a Corvallis, Ore.-based company developing robots that work alongside people in warehouses, has raised a $150 million round from Amazon and other backers.
DCVC and Playground Global led the round, which included the newly announced Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, a $1 billion venture fund that Amazon just revealed to invest in startups building customer fulfillment, logistics, and supply chain technologies.
Founded in 2015, Agility began shipping its “Digit” robot to customers in 2018 and inked a deal with Ford in 2020. Its robots can help companies move packages and unload tractor trailers. They walk forward, backward, side-to-side, up and down inclines, across unstructured terrain, and can turn in place or crouch-walk.
“Unprecedented consumer and corporate demand have created an extraordinary need for robots to support people in the workplace,” Damion Shelton, CEO of Agility Robotics, said in a statement.
Agility will expand its offices in Oregon and Silicon Valley, and also just opened a new hub in Pittsburgh, Pa., where Shelton is based. He was previously CTO at threeRivers 3D, and earned his Ph.D in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Shelton met Agility’s CTO, Jonathan Hurst, at CMU; Hurst was a graduate student there and is currently a robotics professor at Oregon State University. They founded the company with Mikhail Jones, who was a student of Hurst’s at OSU.
In a blog post, Hurst wrote that “the need for flexible automation is acute,” noting the labor shortage and warehouse worker injuries, in addition to supply chain delays and unpredictable consumer demand amid the pandemic.
“To solve this complex labor puzzle, robots are needed to lift the burden of hard, manual labor, provide workforce flexibility, and enable people to do work that requires creativity and judgment – inherently human traits,” Hurst wrote.
The company employs around 85 people and expects to double headcount by 2024.
Agility was one of five initial startups that landed funding from Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund.
“Agility’s approach to designing robotics for a blended workforce is truly unique and can have a significant ripple effect for a wide range of industries, and we hope others follow suit to accelerate innovation in this way,” Katherine Chen, head of the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, said in a statement.
