Standard Bots Secures $200M to Expand US Manufacturing Footprint

Standard Bots today announced that it has raised $200 million in Series C funding, bringing its valuation to $1 billion. The company said it plans to use the investment to expand its manufacturing footprint in New York. This will increase its ability to design, assemble, and deploy American-made robots at scale.

"AI-native robots are the essential power tool of the 21st century – the tool that will grow American manufacturing and help every worker to be a force at work," stated Evan Beard, co-founder, CEO, and chief engineer of Standard Bots. "AI will allow industrial robots to do 100x more tasks with full autonomy. You just show your robot how it’s done, and it learns through demonstration." "The quickest way to get to full autonomy is through deployments, collecting real-world data, and iterating as fast as possible," he added.

"Standard Bots is the furthest along in that regard with the most vertically integrated, onshore production process, and this new capital just accelerates all of that." RoboStrategy and other existing investors led the round. Standard Bots makes AI-native robot arms and industrial humanoids. The company claimed that its robots require no code to program for deployment across a range of applications, including machining, welding, palletizing, grinding, fastening, dispensing, assembly, inspection, and more.

Customers range from Fortune 100 companies to small and midsize manufacturers across the country. When counting affiliated suppliers and services, manufacturing accounts for roughly a third of the U.S. economy and a third of American jobs, according to Standard Bots.

For every one manufacturing worker, another five jobs are supported elsewhere in the economy. But for decades, the U.S. has shed manufacturing jobs, said the company.

The country has gone from 20 million manufacturing workers in 1979 to only 13 million today. This is because U.S. manufacturing is no longer competitive globally, Standard Bots asserted.

Sourcing from China and other parts of the world is generally five to 10 times cheaper. This isn’t just because of lower labor costs, it’s also because of China’s national investment in robotics, said Standard Bots. Last year, China installed nine times more industrial robots than America, and more than the rest of the world combined, it noted.

Standard Bots said it has deployed AI-native, industrial robots to hundreds of American companies in nearly every state. From this experience, the company learned that manufacturers become more competitive when they put robots to work. Against this backdrop, the company is expanding its facility in Glen Cove, N.Y., to 70,000 sq.