Dresden, Germany-based Wandelbots, the robotic software company that aims to make it easy and flexible for everyone to work with robots, announced on Wednesday that it has raised over $84M (approx €74.35M) in its Series C round of funding.
The round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors 83North, Microsoft, Next47, Paua, Atlantic Labs, and EQT.
Philine Huizing, Principal at Insight Partners, will join the Wandelbots board.
Huizing says, “One of the largest challenges we see in the adoption of robotics and increased automation, from a time, cost, and talent perspective, is robot programming. Wandelbots streamlines robot programming across OEMs and manufacturers using a platform approach. Its long-term vision is to be the universal control plane for the complex and fragmented ecosystem of robotics. We look forward to partnering with the Wandelbots team as they continue to grow and realise their vision of democratising the robotics market.”
Capital utilisation
The company says that the proceeds from this round will help it to open its robotics software platform to automation solution providers and third-party developers to create a developer community. This will enable developers to build their own robotics applications on top of a manufacturer-agnostic control plane.
Besides, the funds will also be used in scaling Wandelbots’ flagship teaching solution to support more robots, applications, and regions worldwide, expand its global footprint, accelerate hiring and build go-to-market organisations in the US and Asia.
Christian Piechnick, CEO and co-founder of Wandelbots, says, “Our platform will help to accelerate human-centred robotics solutions in the industry. We look forward to working with Insight Partners and can’t wait to see what developers will create in the future based on our transformative technology.”
“Making robots helpful companions for everyone”
Wandelbots believes the world will change for good if people focus on their creativity and give monotonous work to robots. It aims to empower everybody to work with robots. The company claims to offer the world’s easiest robot programming solution and one unified platform for developers to create more ‘easy-to-use’ software for robots.
Wandelbots developed a solution called Wandelbots Teaching, which introduced the category of No-Code to Robotics. Instead of programming, operators can teach their robots using an input device (TracePen) and an intuitive app. By making robotics simple and accessible to application experts, Wandelbots empowers companies, large and small, to work easily with robots on their shop floors.
Wandelbots’ platform is used by several robot manufacturers and OT system integrators. Robots from Universal Robots and Yaskawa at customers like BMW, VW, Fraunhofer, Schaeffler, Rotop and Vitesco run on Wandelbots, and the company has partnered with system integrators across Europe, including Gibas, Alumotion, Heidenbluth and Sojka.
Wandelbots was founded in 2017 by Christian Piechnick, Christoph Biering, Frank Fitzek, Georg Puschel, Giang Nguyen, Jan Falkenberg, Maria Piechnick, and Sebastian Werner. Currently, the company employs more than 140 people from 17 countries.
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