China's Geek+ closes Series B round at $150m

The company announced in July of last year that it had collected $60 million for the Series B, with Warburg Pincus taking the lead. Warburg Pincus’ overall contribution to the round has since risen to $100 million, with additional contributions coming from other existing shareholders, including Volcanics Venture and Vertex Ventures.

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. As a result, customers can achieve highly-automated, or unmanned warehouses and factories.

More than 5,000 robots have been delivered to date, while over 100 warehouse automation projects have been completed. Customers come from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Europe, and the US. Geek+ has also formed strategic partnerships with multinationals in areas such as e-commerce, logistics, automotive, fast fashion, and pharmaceuticals.

During the recent November 11 Singles’ Day online shopping extravaganza, Geek+ robots processed in excess of five million orders. The system was handling 850 orders per second, based on an average size of up to four pieces per order. It takes two minutes for the system to receive instructions from the consumer interface and the peak capacity for order-taking through interface feedback is 60,000 orders per minute.

Yong Zheng, the company’s founder and CEO, said in a statement that the business would likely grow more than fivefold this year. The Series B funding will go towards investment in new products and solutions, expanding the global distribution network, and improving customer service.

“Geek+ is one of the leading technology companies that is able to combine robotics, big data, AI and other cutting-edge technologies to solve the pain points of the traditional supply chain. As it accumulates more data and continues to optimize algorithms and expand into other industries, we are confident that Geek+ will continue to lead the revolution and innovation in the space,” said Jericho Zhang, an executive director at Warburg Pincus.

Geek+ received RMB100 million ($14 million) in Series A funding in March 2017. The round was led by Vertex and also featured Gaorong Capital and Volcanics, which together provided RMB50 in seed capital in 2016. Volcanics was founded by Suyang Zhang, who was formerly a partner at IDG Capital.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Real estate
• Expansion
• China
• Logistics
• Warburg Pincus Asia
• Vertex Management (II)