This includes $20.6 million in equity, as well as $22.5 million in equipment financing debt that will be used to finance the robotic systems for the firm’s Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) solution.
The RaaS solution has been developed to support food companies increase production volumes and meet demand, while automating labour intensive tasks such as packing and portioning.
The equity round was led by Avataar Ventures and included backing from more than 10 other investment firms. Chef Robotics, which is headquartered in San Francisco, has now raised $65.6 million in total.
Chef Robotics is working with brands in the US and Canada including Amy’s Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay and Cafe Spice, which use its AI-enabled robots to assemble meals in their kitchens.
The robots are trained using on real-world production data and have prepared more than 44 million meals to date.
‘Pole position to scale’
“Robotics is really having a moment right now [and] the innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of Embodied AI for robotics,” said Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics.
“We believe we’re in the pole position to scale given all the real-world production training data we already have.”
The new funds will also enable Chef Robotics to scale its team and invest further in non-engineering functions including sales and marketing.
In addition to the US and Canada, the firm is also targeting the UK and plans to launch in this country during 2025.
“Industrial AI is already winning, and food packaging automation is quietly transforming how we get our meals,” added Mohan Kumar, founder and managing partner of Avataar Ventures.
“Chef has quickly cemented its standing as the industry leader in AI-enabled robotics for meal assembly at over 44M servings produced and counting. We look forward to this exciting partnership with Chef Robotics as they expand their global leadership.”
