1MRobotics, a startup developing next-generation robotic dark stores, or as they classify them - robotic nano-fulfillment centers, announced today that Ibex Investors led their A-round funding along with its existing backers Emerge VC, Target Global, and INT3, with participation from other prominent investors. The Series A funding brings its total raised to $25 million, including a previous seed round of $8.5 million.

The company is launching out of stealth while also announcing exciting collaborations with leading Fortune 500 CPG brands and Q-commerce players. The financing will be leveraged for expansion into new global markets and enterprise clients, as well as the growth of the team. 

“Last-mile delivery is a highly challenging space where any brand/retailer/operator is pushing to deliver at maximal efficiency and in the shortest time window possible. Dark stores are a new class of infrastructure that is essential for Quick-Commerce and Direct-to-Consumer retail”, said CEO Eyal Yair. “1MRobotics develops robotic nano-fulfillment centers, creating the next-gen dark stores designed specifically to meet the ever-growing need for rapid delivery and enabling quick expansion and optimal unit economics. Our systems are shipped globally inside standard shipping containers, ready to operate. On-site, the systems are deployable either as standalone units (within the containers) or inside any retail facility - allowing 1MRobotics the flexibility to position its units at any point around the world. 1MRobotics brings full automation and a modular approach, enabling rapid deployment at a global scale while ensuring a significant operational cost reduction. This is now a reality.”   

“The next decade will be marked with consumers continuing to demand convenience and expecting retailers and brands to supply their favorite products faster and cheaper. However, today, nearly all existing last-mile facilities are operating in a manual way and inefficiently. This is where 1MRobotics comes in – providing a “plug-and-play” full automation solution for last mile fulfillment across nearly any category while reducing cost and associated environmental impact. We believe the future of commerce is headed towards a network of fully automated and distributed nano-fulfillment sites - that is exactly what 1MRobotics enables”, said Gal Gitter, Partner at Ibex Investors.  

1MRobotics, which is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, was founded in 2021 by Eyal Yair, Co-Founder & CEO, and Roee Tuval, Co-Founder & COO. Yair previously co-founded and led four companies and sold 2 of them. Tuval, ex-IDF elite tech unit, brings a rich background in hardware, software, robotics, and electro-optics and over 15 years of consulting to companies in Israel and abroad. The two say that it’s become abundantly clear that instant delivery is already a revolution. From CPGs that are shifting to DTC, to Quick Commerce players that are emerging all around the world, the consumer expectations for faster delivery are undisputed.

They set out to develop fully automated, small, and flexible dark stores enabling effective and profitable last-mile operations for the world’s largest brands and service providers. To address the key pains of last-mile operations - those being unit economics and scale - 1MRobotics designed an off-the-shelf solution that can be deployed anywhere while reducing workforce headcount to the bare minimum, if not zero, and ensuring optimal operational efficiencies.

“Our goal is to create a new, global technology infrastructure for the last-mile fulfillment sector that would complement any existing fulfillment network. An important part of our solution is our holistic approach to providing a hardware and software ecosystem in order to ensure a smooth operation at any scale and complexity,” Yair added.

1MRobotics occupies a segment of the global fulfillment industry — an industry ripe for disruption, expected to grow immeasurably in the coming years, with research indicating 45000 dark stores forecast by 2030. The fulfillment ecosystem has seen many vendors in the micro-fulfillment category or larger. But the company, which has already deployed systems in the short time that has passed since its inception, sees itself as the creator of a new category of its own - nano-fulfillment centers.

“Simply put - other players in this space focus on very large facilities, operating in centralized logistics facilities that are thousands of square meters in size. Add to that an enormous overhead, site development timeframes in the six months to a year windows, if not longer, and a project-led mindset. We’re playing a completely different ball game. We’ve created an off-the-shelf product that is good-to-go, at a fraction of the time, size, and cost; It’s state-of-the-art automation in just 20 square meters”, Yair commented. “We believe that 5-10 years from now, automated dark stores will be on street corners of the largest metropolitans around the world in abundance. Retail is experiencing its next phase of evolution. Fulfillment automation technology is the enabler, and we’re spearheading this disruption”, Yair said.