Covariant announces $75 million in backing for its artificial intelligence platform

Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) provider Covariant today said it has raised an additional $75 million in venture capital to help deploy its technology more broadly “to fix today’s broken supply chain.”

The “series C” round was led by returning investors Radical Ventures and Index Ventures, with additional funding from returning investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Amplify Partners. The round also included new investors Gates Frontier Holdings, AIX Ventures, and Northgate Capital. It follows a 2021 round of $80 million and bring its total funding to $222 million.

According to Emeryville, California-based Covariant, the backing comes as retail executives are eager to invest in AI-powered robotic automation. With its new funding, Covariant said it will help retailers and their logistics providers to deploy robotic picking quickly and without disruption to their current operations.

The firm applies its AI platform – the Covariant Brain – to an array of piece-picking and case-picking applications found in manual warehouse operations. That AI-powered product portfolio now includes order sortation, item induction, good-to-person order picking, kitting, and depalletization solutions.

“The leading companies have turned to AI Robotics to automate their most manual operations in order to decrease labor costs, increase throughput, and control profitability,” Covariant CEO Peter Chen said in a release. “The past year for Covariant has been incredible with 6x growth in 2022 – and we are just getting started. This infusion of new capital allows us to scale even faster, ensuring more retailers can automate more parts of their fulfillment networks to remove manual bottlenecks, handle fluctuating demand, and better prepare for ever-changing business needs.”