Software infrastructure firm Freedom Robotics announced last week that it has raised $6.6 million in seed funding. Initialized Capital led the round, which saw participation from Toyota AI Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Andrew Miklas from S28 Capital and James Lindenbaum, alongside existing investors Green Cow Venture Capital, Justin Kan, Josh Buckley, Kevin Mahaffey and Arianna Simpson.
The company provides cloud and on-device software for monitoring, control and management of robots and robotic fleets, a growing need for robotics companies in need of sophisticated product solutions.
“We are incredibly proud of this milestone for our company,” said CEO Joshua Wilson, in a statement. “Support from the top VC firms in the world like Initialized Capital, Toyota AI Ventures, and S28 Capital has further accelerated our team in providing the best tools, services, and infrastructure needed by new and veteran robotics companies to build, scale, and operate everything from prototypes to fleets of thousands of robots.”
Freedom Robotics sees an opportunity in tackling the “undifferentiated heavy lifting” of software infrastructure that robotics companies all require. By removing the need for full-stack in-house development, Freedom Robotics works with companies of all sizes to accelerate product development, getting robotics products to market 10x faster with half of the team and resources.
“We'll soon reach a point when there are more robots than cell phones and we'll need the 'Microsoft of robotics' platform to power such a massive market. Freedom Robotics has a huge first-mover advantage and the collective past experience to be the team that stays in front of the tailwind and wins.”
“We'll soon reach a point when there are more robots than cell phones and we'll need the 'Microsoft of robotics' platform to power such a massive market,” said Garry Tan, managing partner at Initialized Capital, in a statement. “Freedom Robotics has a huge first-mover advantage and the collective past experience to be the team that stays in front of the tailwind and wins.”
Companies in industries such as agriculture, restaurants, factories, warehouse logistics and last mile delivery networks are leveraging Freedom Robotics’ platform. Its capabilities include monitoring, control, management and analysis for robots and robotic fleets.
“Cloud learning will be a game changer for robotics, allowing the experience of one robot to be “taught” to the rest on the network. We’ve been looking for startups with the technology and market savvy to realize this cloud robotics future through fleet management, control, and analytics,” said Jim Adler, Founding Managing Director at Toyota AI Ventures, in a statement. “We were impressed with Freedom Robotics’ customer-first, comprehensive approach to managing and controlling fleets of robots, and look forward to supporting the Freedom team as they make cloud robotics a market reality.”
Plans for this seed capital include platform development and team expansion.