Photoneo Brightpick Group bags €17M to complete Series B at €37M

Photoneo Brightpick Group, a provider of robotic vision sensors and intelligence software, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $19M (approximately €17M) to complete a Series B round of funding at $40M (approximately €37M).

The round was led by Taiwania Capital, along with follow-on investments by prior Series B lead investors IPM Group and Alpha Intelligence Capital.

H&D Asset Management, Venture to Future Fund, and Kolowrat Group also participated in the round. 

The company has now raised a total of $53M (approximately €48M) since its inception. The announcement comes over a year after raising $21M (approximately €19M) in a Series B round in December 2021 and announcing the company’s new business unit, Brightpick.

The company says it will use the funds to scale Brightpick’s warehouse automation solution for E-commerce and grocery order fulfilment in the US.

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

Photoneo Brightpick Group: What you need to know

Founded by Jan Zizka, Tomas Kovacovsky, Michal Maly, and Branislav Puliš, Photoneo provides robotic vision sensors and intelligence software. 

Photoneo claims its business unit, Brightpick, offers the world’s most efficient warehouse automation solutions for e-commerce and grocery order fulfilment. 

Brightpick’s end-to-end robotic solution autonomously picks, consolidates, and dispatches orders in large, small, and micro fulfilment centres. 

As per the company’s claims, its solution enables warehouses to reduce their picking labour by 95 per cent and cuts the cost of order fulfilment by half.

Brightpick has been rolling out its warehouse automation solution in Europe, including with Rohlik Group, a grocery delivery company that offers a 90-minute same-day delivery service.

Photoneo Brightpick Group has more than 300 employees and is used in over 5000 technology installations across the US, Europe, and Asia. 

Currently, the group boasts of clients such as General Motors, Volkswagen, and KUKA. The company says that the US accounts for approximately 25 per cent of Photoneo Brightpick Group’s revenue. 

The Investor

Taiwania Capital is a venture capital firm founded by the National Development Fund of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan and private enterprises. 

The VC firm focuses on investing in technologies and biotech areas startups that are Taiwan or US-based with disruptive and advanced technology.

“Photoneo Brightpick Group has strong leadership, talented engineers, and world-class technology that will fundamentally change how online retailers and grocers do order fulfilment in the future,” says Mitch Yang, managing partner at Taiwania Capital. “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.”