Brightpick brings in $19M for US expansion

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Brightpick’s CEO Jan Zizka with one of the company’s picking robots. | Source: Brightpick

Brightpick, the business unit of Photoneo that provides warehouse automation systems, brought in $19 million in funding, bringing Photoneo’s Series B round to a total of $40 million. The company plans to use the latest round of funding to further expand into the US. This round brings Photoneo’s total funding to date to $53 million. 

“We are seeing extremely strong interest from existing and new customers for Brightpick’s solution because it helps customers cut operating costs and eliminate labor challenges, two relevant concerns in today’s tough economic environment,” Jan Zizka, CEO and co-founder of Photoneo Brightpick Group, said. “These new funds will help us accelerate the pace of deployment of our solution and scale our US presence.”

Brightpick’s current customers include General Motors, Volkswagen and KUKA. Right now, 25% of its revenue comes from US accounts, with over 5,000 technology installations in the United States already. The company is looking to fund new installations of its warehouse automation system in the US.

Taiwania Capital led the funding round, which also included participation from investors that had already committed to Photoneo’s Series B, including IPM Group and Alpha Intelligence Capital. Joining the existing investors are new investors H&D Asset Management, Venture to Future Fund and Kolowrat Group. 

“Photoneo Brightpick Group has strong leadership, talented engineers and world-class technology that will fundamentally change how online retailers and grocers do order fulfillment in the future,” Mitch Yang, managing partner at Taiwania Capital, said. “We look forward to working closely with them in this high-growth phase. In addition, we believe our connections to Taiwan’s ICT (Information and Communications Technology) sectors could add great value to this partnership.”

Brightpick’s automated fulfillment system is intended for warehouses and dark stores, and can be modified to fit a variety of fulfillment centers, from nano to central fulfillment centers. According to the company, the system can be deployed in a month and can store between 1,000 and 50,000 SKUs. Brightpick promises the system can reduce picking labor by 95%, and cut costs for order fulfillment by half. 

Unlike other fulfillment solutions, like AutoStore’s grid method, Brightpick’s robot runners are vision navigated, using 3D vision. The robots retrieve totes, while orders are consolidated and dispatched by mobile robots. Brightpick’s robots are able to pick items every seven seconds, according to the company.

Brightpick plans on announcing a next-generation version of its order-picking system powered by proprietary machine vision and AI technology in Q1 of 2023. The company has more than 300 employees currently. 

Photoneo announced the business unit in December 2021, when it announced the first part of its Series B round.