On June 26, US software and robotics startup Bright Machines announced the completion of its Series C funding, raising $126 million.

The $106 million equity investment was led by BlackRock, with participation from Nvidia, Microsoft, Eclipse, Jabil and Shinhan Securities. Jpmorgan Chase is offering $20 million in risky debt.

The company plans to spend almost all of the money raised on robotics, computer vision and other automation issues.

So far, the company has raised more than $400 million.

Robotics start-up

PCI-6225 Founded in 2018, SAN Francisco-based Bright Machines is an industry-leading software and robotics company that provides full-stack automation solutions for manufacturing.

At present, the electronics manufacturing industry faces the problem of the prevalence of manual operations and backward processes, and its production links are isolated and inefficient, which directly pushes up costs. At the same time, the widespread application of artificial intelligence technology has intensified the desire for powerful computing power, which in turn has led to a sharp increase in the demand for artificial intelligence hardware. However, the industry is suffering from a bottleneck caused by a large number of decentralized suppliers, which leads to frequent clogging of the supply chain system, further increasing the difficulty of transformation and development.

Bright Machines’ full-stack solution provides centralized data visibility, traceability, performance benchmarking, and flexible automation.

In Bright Machines’ digital ecosystem, valuable data is constantly generated and communicated to a central hub, creating a powerful engine for continuous optimization. Leveraging this powerful data network, Bright Machines’ Automated Assembly Design (DFAA) tool provides virtual design recommendations to reduce time-to-market.

The company’s robots utilize machine learning algorithms to help ensure quality control and traceability during assembly inspections. Once a product reaches the end of its useful life, Bright Machines’ flexible disassembly helps harvest and recycle components for full circular manufacturing. By combining this data network with agile robotics, modeling, and simulation, Bright Machines provides a powerful, modern factory that goes far beyond what traditional factories can achieve.

Lior, the founder of Bright Machines, is passionate about bringing the full-stack approach to traditional industries and building Bridges between the digital worlds.

Led by Lior, Bright Machines teamed up with Ichilov Hospital, Impact LABS, and iCobots to create a robotic workstation with its standard modules, complete with twin conveyor belts, robotic arms, and vision systems. The robot can process tubes of different sizes, transfer samples to the control tube, and the accuracy of the operation is monitored by the vision system. The device will soon be installed in the Ichilov Hospital laboratory and is expected to be fully operational in a few weeks, with free service for the first year. Its efficient performance has attracted the attention of global testing agencies.

PCI-6225 In addition, Bright Machines has partnered with Diagnostics for the Real World to automate the assembly of HIV test kits using its platform, aiming to reduce assembly time from two minutes to 20 seconds through micro-factories and increase annual production from 100,000 to 1 million.

Five years, five rounds, a lot of money

In the five years since its founding, Bright Machines has completed five rounds of financing. Among them, the A+ round raised $179 million and the B round raised $100 million.

Almost every pen is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Bright Machines are real.

The acquisition of Nvidia and Microsoft has brought unprecedented impetus to the development of Bright Machines.

The last time the two appeared together in the robot investment circle was in February this year, in the latest round of financing of Figure AI, a US startup company developing AI humanoid robots. Figure AI has raised about $675 million in this round of funding, and Microsoft and Nvidia have participated.

From the public information point of view, Microsoft is currently in the robot “face” number is still less, but can not underestimate its attention to the future intelligent automation and human-machine collaboration market.

Nvidia, by contrast, is an active player.

Last month, agricultural robot developer Carbon Robotics announced a strategic investment from NVentures, completing a Series C+ round of funding.

In October, U.S. startup Machina Labs announced that it had completed a $32 million Series B funding round led by NVenture and Innovation Endeavors.

In March 2022, Nvidia also “single-handedly” invested $10 million in delivery robot startup Serve Robotics.

In addition, Nvidia has teamed up with Nine Robot, a global leader in innovative short transportation and service robots, to jointly develop the autonomous robot platform Nova Cater AMR.

Write at the end

In this wave of intelligent transformation of manufacturing, people like Bright Machines are driving the integration of technological innovation and practical applications at an unprecedented speed, redefining the face of the “factory of the future.”

The hand in hand with technology giants such as NVIDIA and Microsoft is not only the combination of capital, but also the deep integration of top technology and industry insight, indicating that robotics and artificial intelligence will reshape the production process in more dimensions and promote industrial upgrading.