This Warehouse Robot Is Not For Sale — You Hire It By The Month
This Warehouse Robot Is Not For Sale — You Hire It By The Month Most robots are products you buy. This one is more like an employee you hire. Brooklyn-based startup Ultra has announced a $50 million Series A funding round, led by Framework Ventures with Y Combinator participating, bringing its total announced funding to $62 million including an earlier $12 million seed round. Ultra's robot is called Operator (OP1). It is a dual-arm stationary robot that works from a fixed workstation with a footprint of just 5 by 5 feet, plugging into a standard wall outlet. Each arm can handle payloads of up to 10 pounds, and its job is the everyday warehouse work of packing, sorting and kitting. The twist is the business model. Instead of selling robots, Ultra rents them monthly — "robots as a service" — charging an integration fee plus monthly hardware and software fees. The robot's AI comes from a deepened partnership with Physical Intelligence, whose "robot brain" mo...