Softbank Vision Fund to join $300 million round in robot startup Cloudminds

SoftBank Vision Fund is joining a $300 million investment in Cloudminds, helping the Chinese robotics and artificial intelligence startup ramp up production capacity with the goal of tripling its revenue this year.

Cloudminds, which last raised money in 2017 at a $440 million valuation, aims to sell half a million of its robots this year to Chinese customers from banks and malls to hospitals, Chief Financial Officer Richard Tang said in an interview. The latest funds will bankroll, among other things, the expansion of a $20 million production line its building in Shanghai that should kick off output in June or July, he said during the Credit Suisse Asian Investment conference.

The latest funding, which Tang disclosed and has not been previously reported, is in its initial stages and subject to change, he said. Representatives for the Vision Fund, its largest external backer with nearly 30 percent of the company, were not immediately available for comment.

Four-year-old Cloudminds hopes to capitalize on a growing mania for robots across a swathe of industries from restaurants and retail to hotels. Its signature machine is the XR1, which for nearly $50,000 comes equipped with voice, motion and vision as a platform that other developers can then write software to customize. Its planning to expand into the United States (US) in a small way this year, selling several hundred robots, then Japan in 2020, Tang added.

Robots have so far failed to fire the public’s imagination outside of factories and warehouses. Boston Dynamics, a much-ballyhooed firm started by engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), for example, spent more than a dozen years developing four-legged automatons but still hasnt proven they can be commercialized. Most of the $2.1 billion spent by consumers in 2017 on household robots was for automated vacuum cleaners and lawn-mowers -- not exactly cutting-edge.

Still, the company builds robots with greater dexterity and versatility than Boston Dynamics or SoftBank Group Corp’s own Pepper, Tang claims. Its XR1 can hold an egg, sew with a needle and pour water, he said. Its machines, which can function as guards in a residential complex or as service droids, combine internet computing power with in-device processing, Tang added.

While the XR1 and its ilk can record images and sound, Tang says it needs user-permission to collect and store information such as facial data. Its deepening its footprint in America but Tang said any US data it collects will be stored locally, not transmitted overseas.

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