Autonomous mobile robotics (AMR) company Geek+ announced it has now deployed 20,000 robots across the globe.
The Beijing-based company has automated warehouses for the likes of Circle K, Walmart, Nike, Decathlon and more in the past two years. It opened U.S. offices in February 2020 and now operates in 30 countries.
“In past months, we’ve seen worldwide curiosity turn into action with numerous business leaders deciding to invest in intelligent automation,” said Yong Zheng, Geek+ founder and CEO. “For us, the rapid growth demonstrates our R&D team’s ability to develop world-class solutions and signals future opportunities to gather more industry know-how. Our goal is to improve our customers’ operation management and continue to drive change using advanced robotics and strong AI.”
Founded in 2015, Geek+ provides autonomous robots but also technologies designed to automate logistics operations. AMRs are the evolved versions of the automated guided vehicles (AGVs) that have been in the industry for a few decades. AGVs typically are used for repetitive tasks in a warehouse, like relaying materials and fetching products. AGVs are not intelligent and thus completely dependent on humans to determine their routes. AMRs, though, use artificial intelligence to intuitively understand a warehouse floor, updating their databases in real time on the constant changes within inventories. AMRs can collaborate and work in tandem with other intelligent warehousing systems, helping warehouses run operations without hiccups even during the peak demand season.
The Geek+ product line includes goods-to-person picking robots, bin-to-person RoboShuttles and sorting, moving and lifting robots.
“We are not just an AMR provider but a long-term automation partner that continuously optimizes the operations of our customers,” Zheng noted. “It is done by strengthening our local service capabilities but also by simply analyzing robots in action and using the data gathered to optimize the algorithm powering our robots. It helps customers overcome logistics bottlenecks and gain short- and long-term efficiency improvements, allowing them to grow and expand their business.”
In June 2020, Geek+ announced the closing of a $200 million Series C investment round led by GGV Capital, D1 Capital Partners along with Warburg Pincus. Total funding in the company is $439.4 million across six rounds, according to Crunchbase.
The company employs 1,500 people worldwide and operates its own fully automated robot manufacturing factory and a third-party logistics company so it can leverage and learn from its solutions.
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