Congrats to Armstrong Robotics for raising $12M!
We are very excited for what is to come next for Armstrong Robotics. Last October AR successfully raised $12M in funding to date from VC giants Lerer Hippeau, Bloomberg Beta, Next Play Ventures, Transmedia Capital, and WestWave Capital. The AR team has been working tirelessly to solve a seemingly simple problem: cleaning dishes. Turns out it’s anything but simple. Every cup, dish and type of silverware . Even if you standardize the tableware, no two messes are the same. And it doesn’t help that the materials, glass and ceramic, are some of the most brittle upon impact so mistakes are costly.
Companies like AR are the perfect robotics application for AI. I hate to burst bubbles but realistically we are much further from the humanoid robotic servant than most people are led to believe. Take self-driving vehicles for example. After hundreds of billions invested in the space, so far only Waymo has proven truly worthy of the name self-driving. And driving is a very defined environment. There are strict rules and laws of the road and there are literally lines painted on the ground to point direct traffic. There are almost no bounds on power or space on the vehicle to put any amount of redundant sensors. AI will surely help overcome of the challenges of more un-bounded environments, but AI can naturally be more effective when the stakes are lower and the robot can quantify its improvements and errors in real-time. Back kitchens offer that environment perfectly. Better to break plates than bend fenders. Trust me on this one, I’m half Greek.
We are so proud to have contributed early on in AR’s early development cycle. I had known one of the founders, Luke, for years and didn’t need to be asked twice to help solve some of their reliability problems. We are so happy for the team now that they are deploying demo units and are well on their way to making a massive disruption in the restaurant industry.
Read more about their funding round here.
mass-pd.com/work/armstrong-robotics
