Oct 17, 2023

Formant – a leading robotics data and operations platform – recently announced the completion of a $21 million funding round. The funding round was led by BMW i Ventures, with participation from new investors Intel Capital, GS Futures, and previous investors, including SignalFire, Hillsven, Pelion Ventures, Holman, Ericsson, Goodyear Ventures, PICUS Capital and Thursday Ventures. This latest funding round comes after a year of record growth for Formant – during which the company increased revenue by more than 500% year-over-year. This growth has come from blue-chip enterprises like Blue River Technology (a subsidiary of John Deere) and BP and industry leaders such as Burro, Scythe, and Knightscope. The company will use the funding round to expand its hiring across all departments, introduce new products and features, and accelerate growth in 2023 and beyond. This year, Formant expanded its focus to the enterprise, taking advantage of the accelerating adoption of intelligent robots across large organizations. And Formant delivers a secure data platform to operate fleets of robots at any scale through a single pane of glass. Formant’s rapid growth was supported by a flurry of new product introductions and integrations, including enterprise-grade tools and account management features to empower enterprise customers. And earlier this year, the company launched Theopolis, the AI language interface that enables non-technical users to interact directly with robot data and build visualizations inside Formant. Formant aims to underpin the intersection of robotics and AI for enterprises and robotics companies. And to help teams get the most out of every robot, Formant also supports easy integrations with many of the industry’s leading tools, such as ROS2, NVIDIA’s Isaac simulator, and Clearpath’s Outdoor Navigation. KEY QUOTES: “Formant is uniquely positioned to meet the business objectives and technical requirements of large enterprise companies operating at global scale looking to expand their robotics footprint. Our platform now powers tens of thousands of production robots around the world across dozens of different industries.” — Jeff Linnell, CEO and Founder of Formant “Autonomous robotic systems have broken free from R&D departments and are now being deployed at scale to drive business outcomes and resilient operations. Their proliferation across mission-critical functions as well as support tasks for humans in various industries underscores the urgent need for seamless data management and orchestration across robotic endpoints. Formant is the operating system underpinning the future of the automated enterprise.” — Kasper Sage, Managing Partner at BMW i Ventures “In the ever-evolving landscape of robotics and AI integration, Formant stands ready to take center stage. As industries embrace large-scale automation, the role of data becomes paramount in fleet optimization and AI model training. Formant’s cutting-edge platform simplifies the collection and management of robot data on a grand scale, ushering in a new era where AI seamlessly enhances physical automation.” — Kate MeLynda, President of Formant Trending on Pulse 2.0