Chef Robotics Raises $43.1 Million To Serve Up Smarter Kitchens

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicates that the Accommodation and Food Services sector is facing a labor shortage, with high quit rates and job fill rates below 70%.  Food companies are increasingly looking to offshore elements of their food supply chain to countries with greater labor availability in response to escalating labor shortages. Food robotics solutions created for the restaurant/foodservice industry are attempting to solve these issues.

Domino’s, which annually produces over a billion pizzas, is increasingly using AI and robotics to enhance consistency and solve staffing issues. AI-enabled machines are being used in food manufacturing, packaging, and recycling to perform repetitive and dangerous tasks. This improves operational resilience in food production and addresses current labor shortages.

From fryers to frontlines, bots are in

A recent report valued the global food robotics market at $2.24 billion in 2021. Industry experts project a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.7%, leading to a market value of $5.36 billion in the coming years.

For instance, Flippy 2 can handle 30% more work than a human counterpart and operate without breaks or shifts. While these aren’t humanoids in the sci-fi sense, the push toward humanoid capabilities like interacting, adapting, and working in human-designed spaces is accelerating as restaurants seek ways to enhance consistency and service while reducing reliance on manual labor.

While robotics in the US food industry has gained severe momentum amongst restaurants and other customer bases, startups are also raising substantial funding to automate and streamline these operations.

After securing $32 million in Series A funding, Bear Robotics aims to begin mass production of Penny, its robotic food runner, while Serve Robotics, which delivers meals for Uber Eats and convenience items for 7-Eleven, has recently raised $80 million via a direct offering of 4.2 million shares of common stock.

Startup eyes scale with real-world data

One standout player is Chef Robotics, founded in 2019 with a mission to solve some of the toughest automation challenges in the food industry.

The high variability of food products makes them difficult for current mechatronic dispensers and depositors to handle flexibly. 

Chef Robotics‘ AI-enabled robots were designed to emulate the flexibility of humans, allowing food companies to increase production volume and maintain the American food supply chain domestically.

Developing robots for the demanding food industry required advanced AI capable of learning from real-world data gathered at active customer sites.

Chef Robotics’ ChefOS is built on modern AI advancements, including foundational models, imitation learning (learning from demonstration), and deep learning.

Embodied AI merges perception, action, and learning, allowing it to carry out tasks in real-world environments. This distinguishes it from traditional AI models, such as chatbots or recommendation engines, which solely exist in software.

Their approach addresses the unique challenges of food manipulation, like the variability of food texture, shape, and consistency, by collecting real-time data from robots in production environments. 

These robots effectively act as data collectors and learners, helping the AI model adapt to a wide range of ingredients and tasks. As more robots are deployed and interact with different food types, the AI improves in handling edge cases and becomes more autonomous over time.

The chef’s systems undergo continuous improvement through ongoing training, supported by tens of thousands of hours of production experience, and are further enhanced with each pick they carry out.

In an interview with CNBC, Chef’s founder Rajat Bhageria said, “I can’t just go to the internet and download training data –how do you manipulate a blueberry without squishing it?” 

Funding fuels next-gen food automation

The company recently announced that it has raised $43.1 million in new Series A funding, which consists of $20.6 million in equity and $22.5 million in equipment financing debt.

Chef has raised a total of $65.6 million in capital, consisting of $38.8 million in equity and $26.75 million in equipment financing, all through Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank.

The equity round was led by Avataar Ventures, with additional investments from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, MFV Partners, Interwoven Ventures, HCVC, MaC Venture Capital, Red and Blue Ventures, Tau Partners, Alumni Ventures, Siddhi Capital, and BOLD Capital Partners.

This funding will enable them to expedite the development of physical AI models trained on real-world data, as all of this data from 44M servings is crucial for Chef’s AI models that rely on production data for training.

Chef has been focused on a set of large enterprise and mid-market customers, iterating on the product and technology with them, and scaling within them. This funding round will allow Chef to scale its go-to-market team and efforts by further investing in non-engineering functions like sales and marketing to scale its deployments at net new customers as well as its current customers.

As Rajat Bhageria stated, “Robotics is really having a moment right now. The innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of Embodied AI for robotics. We believe we’re in the pole position to scale given all the real-world production training data we already have.”