Chinese business Syrius Robotics, which creates autonomous robots for warehouses, has just raised USD 40 million in total capital after securing 50 million yuan (USD 7.4 million) in a Series B funding round.
Harvest Capital, a Chinese investment company, specializing in innovations integrated into traditional sectors, is the only backer of its most recent round of funding. In August, Syrius raised USD 20 million in funding for its Series B round, with TikTok parent company ByteDance as the leading investor. Sequoia Capital China also contributes to the startup’s funding.
More about the startup:
Consider Syrius’s robots, miniature autonomous driving machines that can navigate tight warehouse aisles and lift and store packages. The business sees itself more as software than a hardware company, with its algorithms that direct robot movement.
Unlike some of its rivals, the four-year-old business focuses on autonomous mobile robots (AMR), which provide automated guided vehicles (AGV). AMRs are more advanced than AGVs since they can design routes and respond to real-time situations, as opposed to predetermined courses as AGVs can.
The founding team of Syrius seems ideal for its field of business. The other co-founder, Luo Xuan, worked on AMRs as a product management director at Alibaba Robotics, which should have given him much insight into Chinese e-commerce companies’ business considerations when investing in robots. Its co-founder and CEO, Jiang Chao was a leader of Project Tango, the mobile augmented reality project that Google initiated and later shut down.
Syrius, a company with offices in Shenzhen and Beijing, has over 200 employees and is profitable, but it would not share specific financial information. It generates revenue through selling robots, providing monthly subscriptions for robots-as-a-service, and making its Android-based operating system available to other robot manufacturers.
Growth:
In the past two years, during which the COVID-19 pandemic and its control measures have left millions of workers stranded, China’s warehouse robots have become the darlings of investors. Casing handling robot manufacturer Hai Robotics, based in Shenzhen, revealed in September that it had deposited USD 200 million.
Like many Chinese robotics businesses, Syrius has expanded internationally and got half of its income from foreign markets. It operates a subsidiary and has worked with the massive trading house Mitsubishi Corporation and logistics company Kantsu Co. in Japan, where robots are tackling the workforce shortage issue. The startup also has customers in Singapore and South Korea and plans to grow its business in North and Western America and Europe.
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