Locus Robotics Valued at $2 Billion in Latest Round

Locus Robotics, a provider of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) used in fulfillment and distribution warehouses, has closed $117 million in Series F funding, led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and G2 Venture Partners, at a near $2 billion valuation.

Locus provides a multi-bot picking system that integrates with a company’s warehouse staff to eliminate unproductive walking time to improve productivity, lowering cycle times and increasing throughput. With a Locus system, workers no longer must push heavy carts or walk behind slow-moving, robotic carts that limit worker productivity. According to Locus, its autonomous mobile robots provide a 2x to 3x improvement in a company’s piece‐handling, case-handling, and pallet-moving productivity.

Locus has more than 230 sites under contract around the world with some using as many as 500 robots per site. In September 2022, Locus reached a major milestone with its industry-first 1 billionth pick. It took Locus 1,542 days to pick its first 100 million units and just 40 days for the last 100 million picks. Locus robots now average more than three million picks per day around the world. Customers of Locus total more than 90 customers including CEVA Logistics, DHL, Material Bank, Boots UK, GEODIS, Ryder, Verst Logistics, and Radial among others.

“Our 5-year partnership with Locus has enabled DHL to deliver more resilient, flexible, and scalable supply chain solutions to our customers to support faster delivery, improve operational efficiency, and reduce employee workloads,” said Sally Miller, the CIO of DHL Supply Chain North America. “In that time, Locus’s ability to integrate groundbreaking technologies into our operations seamlessly and in a targeted way has been a tremendous success for our customers’ supply chains.”

In 2022, Locus Robotics received 17 industry awards, including being named to the Inc. 500 for the second year in a row and a 2022 IFOY Award for its Autonomous Mobile Robot Solution in the Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV/AMR) category. Locus Robotics, led by CEO Rick Faulk, is headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts with additional facilities in Amsterdam and Singapore.

“This new round of funding marks an important inflection point for Locus Robotics as we look toward our next stage of growth, and we strategically chose to bring in investors with a wealth of experience in both public and private markets to advise us as we continue our journey,” said Mr. Faulk. “As the rapid digital transformation of the supply chain continues, warehouses increasingly seek flexible, intelligent robotics automation to improve productivity and grow their operations, despite ongoing labor shortages and exploding order volumes.”

“By 2026, 75% of large enterprises in product-centric businesses will have adopted some form of intralogistics robots in their warehouse operations,” said Dwight Klappich, an analyst at Gartner. “The lower price of entry and faster time to value of robotics opens the market to more companies that can justify automation … as companies adopt robotics, most organizations will expand and scale their use of robotics within the enterprise, leading to fleet growth.”

“Locus has established itself as an innovative, high-quality market leader for flexible automation in the massive warehouse fulfillment and distribution market,” said Mark Middle, a Goldman managing director. “Our investment reflects our view that Locus has the product offering and the operational excellence required to meet and exceed the market challenges posed by today’s dynamic economic environment.”

“Locus is clearly a winner in the flexible warehouse robotics space, and the consistency with which the Locus team has executed is extraordinary,” said Zach Barasz, a partner at G2. “We are thrilled to be investors in Locus Robotics, and to partner with the leading warehouse execution company in making global supply chains faster, more cost-effective, and more resilient and sustainable.”

As part of the new funding round, both Mr. Middle and Mr. Barasz will join the board of directors of Locus.

Other participants in the Series F round were Stack Capital Group, Next47, Stafford Capital Partners, HESTA, Newton Investment Management North America, Gray’s Creek Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Hercules Capital, BOND, and Scale Venture Partners.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) is the asset management arm of The Goldman Sachs Group (NYSE: GS) and had $2 trillion in assets under supervision as of September 30, 2022.  GSAM invests in numerous alternatives, including private equity, growth equity, private credit, real estate, and infrastructure.

G2 Venture Partners is a venture and growth firm that invests in the transportation, energy, industrials, agriculture, logistics, and retail sectors. The firm was founded in 2016 and is headquartered near San Jose in Portola Valley, California.