Dresden, Germany-based Wandelbots has raised a healthy sum in the years since it appeared on our Disrupt Berlin stage, way back in 2017. The following year, the no-code robotic software firm raised $6.8 million, followed by another $30 million in June 2020, as excitement around automation continued to build as COVID slowed manufacturing to a crawl.
Today the firm returns with a healthy $84 million Series C, putting its funding well north of $100 million to date. This latest round was led by Insight Partners and featured a slate of existing investors, including 83North, Microsoft, Next47, Paua, Atlantic Labs and EQT.
Wandelbots’ mission is a deceptively simple one, and something a number of firms are pushing to solve in the space. Can a robotic software layer lower the barrier of entry for deploying robotics in a factory setting? Specifically, how can a firm deploy a robotic army without the need for a lot of outside help, significant sums of money and/or robotic coding know-how? The company’s solution involves a “Trace Pen,” which an instructor uses to mimic a motion and train the robot in the process. The motion can then be fine-tuned on the software without coding.