Robotic AI firm Covariant raises another $80 million

In May of last year, Covariant announced that it had raised a $40 million Series B. It was a healthy sum of money for the young company, bringing its total funding up to $67 million. Just a little over a year later, the Berkeley-based AI startup is adding another $80 million to its coffers, riding on a wave that dramatically accelerated interest in robotics and AI during the pandemic.

“Companies across multiple industries had already been looking to realize significant gains with AI robotics and with COVID-19, market demands then increased by an order of magnitude,” president, chief scientist and co-founder Pieter Abbeel tells TechCrunch. “Combining this with our last year of successes, our investors are keen to double down. We’ll use the funding to significantly accelerate our global expansion and grow our current lead in a competitive industry.”

The Series C was led by existing investor Index Ventures and features Amplify Partners, Radical Ventures, CPPIB and Temasek. It brings the firm’s total funding up to $147 million for what it calls universal AI for robotic manipulation. “Universal” is really the key word for the Covariant Brain, and the company has already proven how versatile its tech can be in the two years since it came out of stealth.

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