China warehouse robot developer gets $60m Series B

Founded in 2015, Geek+ develops automated systems for moving merchandise around warehouses, much like Kiva Systems, a US-based start-up bought by Amazon in 2012. Its robots use artificial intelligence (AI) to handle tasks such as storage, order picking, material handling, and parcel sorting. For example, they speed up order fulfillment by bringing entire shelves to packaging stations rather than trying to find individual products, which can be done more efficiently by human operators.

Geek+ claims to be the largest logistics robot company in China: it operates the single largest robot warehouse in the country, and has the most robots in operation and the highest processing volume. The company has delivered nearly 1,000 robot units to over 20 customers to date and expects to reach 2,000 units by the end of the year.

Customers include e-commerce platforms, third-party logistics providers, express delivery companies, offline retailers and manufacturers of apparels, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and electronics products. Major projects include warehouse support for Alibaba Group’s November 11 “singles day,” which saw Tmall and Taobao achieve gross merchandise volume of $17.8 billion in 2016. In addition to Alibaba, VIPShop and Suning use Geek+ robots.

The company received RMB100 million ($14 million) in Series A funding as recently as March. That round was led by Vertex Ventures China and also featured Banyan Capital and Volcanics, which together provided RMB50 in seed capital last year. Volcanics was founded by Suyang Zhang, who was formerly a partner at IDG Capital.

The proceeds from the Series B round will be channeled into three areas: upgrading of the robots and expanding the product offerings to cover more applications; accelerating geographical expansion and industry coverage; and exploring overseas markets through multiple channels.

Jericho Zhang, a principal at Warburg Pincus, said that Geek+ reflects how AI technologies are maturing and finding new applications. Traditional, capital-intensive and labor-intensive sectors such as logistics are seen as having enormous potential in this context.

“With the rapid development of China's e-commerce industry, China’s warehouse management industry is undergoing transformational changes. More complex warehouse operations and increasing costs are spurring demand for AI-enabled solutions, particularly logistics robots,” Zhang said in a statement. “The use of AI solutions and logistics robots has clear advantages in cost, efficiency and flexibility over manual warehouse management and other automation technologies.”

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Expansion
• China
• Venture
• Warburg Pincus Asia