XYZ Robotics raised its Series A round, leveraging world-leading robotics technology to power logistics and industrial automation.
Pick anything. Place anywhere anyway.
XYZ Robotics, a startup aiming to build the world's best hand-eye coordination technology, recently closed a nearly $8 million Series A round led by Gaorong Ventures and 5Y Capital. Angel investors Sinovation Ventures, New Wheel Capital, and Aurora CTO Drew Bagnell also participated.
XYZ Robotics' technical vision is "Pick anything. Place anywhere anyway." Swift perception, effortless grasping, and dexterous placement — this is the intelligence XYZ Robotics wants to give robots.
XYZ Robotics founding team
Hand-eye coordination is the integrated application of 3D vision, robotic manipulation algorithms, and AI — and it was the primary research focus of XYZ Robotics' two technical co-founders during their PhDs. CEO Jiaji Zhou earned his PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, where he won the Best Paper Award at ICRA 2016, the world's largest robotics conference, making him only the third Chinese first author to receive this honor in ICRA's 30-year history. CTO Guanting Yu holds a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, where he served as the technical lead for the MIT-Princeton team competing in the Amazon Picking Challenge from 2015 to 2017, placing in the top three globally all three years. COO Lianglibo Xing holds a master's degree from Peking University's School of Economics and manages business development and operations.
CEO Jiaji Zhou receiving the ICRA Best Paper Award in 2016
CTO Guanting Yu leading the MIT-Princeton team at the 2017 Amazon Picking Challenge
Founded in Boston in April 2018, XYZ Robotics' early core R&D team came from MIT, CMU, Northwestern, and other top universities. To execute its strategy of "global technology and vision, localized service and pricing," the company established its global headquarters in Shanghai in September 2018, assembling talent from leading institutions and companies including CMU, MIT, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhejiang University, FANUC, Qualcomm, and Huawei.
Building on its technical foundation from the Amazon Picking Challenge, the XYZ Robotics team has developed two core technologies with high barriers to entry. Dr. Yu explained that the first is machine vision capable of handling tens of thousands of dynamically updated SKUs in warehouses, tightly integrated with robotic motion planning to solve the industry pain point of e-commerce warehouses' diverse and rapidly changing product mix. The second is robotic end-effector design — XYZ Robotics has developed the world's fastest (0.6 second) end-effector quick-change system, dramatically expanding the range of items the system can handle without sacrificing efficiency, using the most suitable gripper for objects of varying sizes and packaging.
XYZ Robotics intelligent solution
In December 2018, XYZ Robotics launched the world's first automated put-wall workstation for mixed-SKU batch picking, deployed at the Suzhou warehouse of a leading domestic logistics company. The robotic picking efficiency reached 1.5x human performance, with no need to pre-collect any product information.
Live deployment at a leading domestic logistics company's warehouse
A project lead at Gaorong Ventures noted that XYZ Robotics has top-tier technical talent capable of applying high-barrier technology to real business scenarios, improving efficiency and delivering genuine value to customers. Gaorong believes that with XYZ Robotics' deep expertise and core technology, the company can provide more comprehensive solutions for large-scale automated and intelligent applications in logistics, industrial, and commercial sectors.
Dr. Zhou stated that while continuing to build its presence in logistics, XYZ Robotics will also push into industrial applications, providing hand-eye coordination core technology to systems integrators to jointly develop new use cases. The company will continue recruiting top talent to build a world-class team, advancing deployments while continuously strengthening its technical competitive moat.
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