Vecna Robotics, a Waltham, MA-based company which specializes in flexible material handling automation solutions, raised $14.5M in additional funding.
Backers included unnamed existing investors.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate technology and product enhancements to address the automation needs of operators in automotive, general manufacturing, high-volume warehousing.
Led by new CEO Karl Iagnemma, Vecna Robotics is a material handling automation company with solutions engineered for work between autonomous mobile robots (AMR) and the labor, equipment, facilities, and systems that make business go. Its self-driving warehouse robots and end-to-end workflow solutions like CaseFlowTM, empowered by Vecna Robotics Pivotal™ software and 24/7/365 Command Center, help distribution, warehousing, and manufacturing organizations automate their most critical tasks, optimize throughput and scale operations fast.
Iagnemma is a robotics expert and entrepreneur with a distinguished career blending academic research and industry leadership. He co-founded and served as CEO of autonomous vehicle technology company nuTonomy, which was later acquired by Aptiv in 2017 for $450MM. Under Iagnemma’s leadership, nuTonomy launched public robotaxi pilots in Singapore. He was also founding CEO of Motional, a $4B robotaxi joint venture between automaker Hyundai Motor Group and Tier 1 supplier Aptiv.
Prior to his industry career, Iagnemma directed the Robotic Mobility Group research laboratory at MIT, where he authored publications related to robotics and artificial intelligence that have been cited more than 20,000 times. He is also an inventor with more than 50 issued or pending patents in robotics and autonomous vehicles. While at MIT, Iagnemma met Daniel Theobald, a fellow MIT alumnus and founder of Vecna Robotics. In 2020, he made an angel investment in Vecna Robotics based on the company’s technology leadership and the potential for robotics to revolutionize material handling.