Warehouse robotics and automation firm GreyOrange has raised $110 million in growth financing, a majority of which has come from Peter Thiel's venture fund Mithril Capital along with a clutch of new and existing investors.
The financing round also included separate debt financing provided by funds and accounts under management by the world's largest asset manager BlackRock, the startup said on May 18.
“As ecommerce sales soar, brands face a stark reality: embrace automation, or cede customers to the competition. We orchestrate fulfillment and optimize inventory in a complex global supply chain environment for more companies that ship millions of items each day than any other player in the market outside of Amazon" founder Samay Kohli said.
With the latest round of funding, the company has raised around $280 million across multiple rounds from investors such as Tiger Global, Flipkart, and Blume Ventures.
Founded in 2011 by Kohli and Akash Gupta, GreyOrange provides end-to-end automated warehouse fulfillment technology solutions through a combination of autonomous mobile robots and artificial intelligence-based software to large retail brands such as Walmart, H&M, COS, Coupang and GXO Logistics.
In March 2022, Walmart also announced a new high-tech sortable fulfillment center in Canada's Alberta that will use GreyOrange's robotic technology.
The company claims that it has clocked over 170 percent gross retention in contracted revenue from customers in 2021.
It has also developed a mobile-first software as a service (SaaS) app called gStore that turns stores into tech-enabled, personalised experience hubs for customers as well as dynamic fulfillment centers for e-commerce using real-time digital management of in-store inventory.
The solution can be deployed either in stores as a standalone solution or as part of GreyOrange’s fulfillment platform.
"Demand for the GreyOrange omnichannel fulfillment platform continued to increase consistent with our high expectations as retailers come to terms with the immediate necessity of robotic automation in fulfillment" said Ajay Royan, Managing General Partner at Mithril Capital Management.
"We are particularly excited about the expansion underway with GreyOrange’s SaaS applications, such as gStore, which deliver new and innovative supply chain solutions to discerning consumers across the GreyOrange customer base.”
GreyOrange said it will deploy the capital to accelerate global expansion and support the adoption of its fulfillment platform in warehouses, distribution centres and retail stores.
"This growth financing enables us to rapidly deliver our premium solution to meet the expansion demand from existing customers, rapidly onboard our high volume of new customers, reach new partners and accelerate our unique product roadmap with an expanded suite of software solutions and predictive analytics" Kohli said.
The company will also use a portion of debt financing towards hiring, as it looks to add another 300 jobs across sales, marketing, product, engineering and customer success teams.
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