Chef Robotics has raised $43.1 million in new Series A funding, which includes $20.6 million in equity and $22.5 million in equipment financing debt. The latter will be used to cover the financing of Chef’s robotic systems for Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) so Chef’s customers don’t have to front capex for their robots.
The equity round was led by Avataar Ventures and included investments from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, MFV Partners, Interwoven Ventures, HCVC, MaC Venture Capital, Red and Blue Ventures, Tau Partners, Alumni Ventures, Siddhi Capital, and BOLD Capital Partners.
The new funding brings Chef’s total capital raised to $65.6 million which consists of $38.8 million in equity and $26.75 million in equipment financing, all with Silicon Valley Bank, a Division of First Citizens Bank.
Chef has quickly cemented its standing as the industry leader in AI-enabled robotics for meal assembly. Now at over 44 million servings produced and counting through robot deployments at leading brands such as Amy’s Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay, and Cafe Spice, Chef has procured more meals than all other existing food robotics startups combined.
The data that Chef collects on each meal assembled is critical to the company as it relies on real-world production data to train its AI models.
The funding round will allow Chef to accelerate production deployments of its robotic systems, providing momentum for the real-world AI data engine flywheel that the company credits for its rapid growth rate of meals produced.
Given food is highly variable, Chef requires high volumes of production data over prolonged periods of time for optimal model performance.
The more data Chef collects in the field, the more its systems’ performance improves, the more customers use Chef’s robotic systems, the more customers expand; this expansion in turn creates more runtime in production leading to more data from the field; it also means that when Chef approaches new customers, Chef can help manipulate their ingredients from the get-go, further accelerating the flywheel’s momentum.
Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics, says: “Robotics is really having a moment right now. The innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of Embodied AI for robotics. We believe we’re in the pole position to scale given all the real-world production training data we already have.”
Mohan Kumar, founder and managing partner of Avataar Ventures, says: “AI in the physical world is happening right now with robotics. Food is one of the largest markets in the world. Industrial AI is already winning, and food packaging automation is quietly transforming how we get our meals.
“Chef has quickly cemented its standing as the industry leader in AI-enabled robotics for meal assembly at over 44 million servings produced and counting. We look forward to this exciting partnership with Chef Robotics as they expand their global leadership.”
Additionally, this infusion of funds will enable Chef to scale its go-to-market team and efforts. The funding round equips Chef to further invest in non-engineering functions like sales and marketing to scale its deployments.