SoftBank-backed robotics unicorn Agile Robots receives €27.9M funding from Foxconn Industrial Internet

Munich and Beijing headquartered Agile Robots, a robot system development and application service provider, announced that it has raised $30M (approximately €27.94M) in funding from China’s Foxconn Industrial Internet (FII). This is FII’s second strategic investment in Agile Robots.

Prior to this, the company raised $220M in its Series C round of funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and supported by financial investors, including Chimera Investments under Abu Dhabi Royal Group, GL Ventures, Sequoia China, and Linear Capital, among others.

Agile Robots’ CEO Zhaopeng Chen, says, “We are proud to have again gained the trust of a strong investor like Foxconn Industrial Internet. We are looking forward to building upon this fruitful collaboration in the future.”

About the investor

Foxconn Industrial Internet Co., Ltd is a China-based company engaged in the research, development, manufacture, and sales of electronic equipment. The company’s main products include communications network equipment, cloud service equipment, precision tools, and industrial robots.

FII says that it is committed to providing enterprises with solutions of technology services based on automation, networking, platformisation and big data. The company claims to be leading the transformation from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing, a new ecology of ‘advanced manufacturing + industrial Internet’ with big data, AI, high-speed networks and robots as technology platforms.

Connecting artificial intelligence and the physical world

Founded in 2018 by Peter Meusel and Zhaopeng Chen, Agile Robots claims to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and the real world. The company is a spin-off of the German Aerospace Center and is developing the next generation of intelligent robots.

With its headquarters in Munich, Germany, and Beijing, China, Agile Robots leads hardware know-how in robotics. With the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) as its technical backbone and the core concept of “artificial intelligence empowerment”, the company is committed to promoting the close combination and innovation of AI and robotics, and expanding the application of robotics in more fields.

The DLR claims that it is not only the first research institution to send intelligent robots into space and perform complex tasks such as human-robot collaboration, but also the first in the world to propose and develop force-controlled robots adopted by various industries.

Agile Robots has developed and launched software and hardware products, such as its operating system, AgileCore, for the coordination of robots and accessories such as end effectors from different manufacturers, its smart force-controlled robot DIANA, its medical robots, humanoid dexterous five-finger hands, and its flexible intelligent platform (FIP). 

With its hardware and software R&D capabilities, the company launched a “robotic worker” that serves as a smart assistant to all kinds of workers and professionals from different fields to take over mundane or dangerous tasks. 

Currently, the company has implemented its robots for production in multiple industrial scenarios. Its products have been put into series production and achieved large-scale applications in medical, industrial (consumer electronics, automotive, jewellery, and other precision assembly and manufacturing scenarios), agricultural, and service fields.