Regions like the U.S. and Europe have been doubling down on rebuilding their industrial muscle after decades of closing down factories and outsourcing the work to countries like China.
To that end, a fast-growing Polish startup called Nomagic, which builds robotic arms for picking, packing and moving in logistics operations, has raised $44 million in funding. The company plans to use the money for both technology and business development, including breaking ground on its first effort to sell its robots to customers outside Europe, specifically in North America.
The investment is notable not just for its size, but because of who is doing the funding and what is going on in the wider industrial landscape.
The perennial question when considering how to make regions more competitive in industry again is a basic one: How? A large part of the workforce that used to run the factories and warehouses of the past has moved to other jobs. And in spaces where that hasn’t happened, industrial operators have been reducing the number of workers to cut labor costs, improving efficiency by bringing in more automation.
Advances in technology has also raised a more existential question: what are the prospects for humans in a world dominated by AI and robots? Early clashes that highlight that question have not played out well. For one recent example, see this viral story of the Y Combinator startup that built an AI-based workplace observer to highlight when workers are slacking off and the backlash that it sparked. Is “Sweatshop as a Service” the new SaaS, critics asked?
Being outraged, unfortunately, doesn’t mean such technology won’t be built, nor that humans will not become obsolete in some functions. It does point to the ongoing debates and struggles that we will continue to have, and what needs addressing.
Nomagic’s funding, in part, appears to be a signal of how some see the world shaping up.
Leading this Series B is the VC arm of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a development bank co-owned by more than 70 countries and two European Union institutions.
The ERBD’s involvement here underscores the governments and their institutions’ push to spur private businesses to help their mission to rebuild industry. They do see robotics and technology as an important lever for helping to make Europe more competitive again in industry.
“Nomagic’s proven track record in deploying advanced AI and robotics technologies, combined with its impressive growth trajectory, positions it as a leader in the warehouse automation revolution,” said ERBD’s Bruno Lusic in a statement. “We’re excited to support the company as it continues to break new ground in this dynamic industry.”
Alongside the EBRD, top-shelf returning backers Khosla Ventures and Almaz Capital are participating. And in a further signal of the institutional mission, the European Investment Bank (EIB) is also throwing in venture debt (the only kind of investment it tends to make).
Per PitchBook data, it looks like Nomagic had raised around $30 million previously (not counting the EIB debt). While the startup and its investors declined to give a valuation, Khosla partner Kanu Gulati confirmed to TechCrunch that it was indeed an “up-round” for the startup. We’ve previously profiled the startup and its technology here and here.
The key point about Nomagic’s robotic arms is that they are, unlike a lot of other robotics startups, not breakthroughs in hardware.
“Most of our hardware is off the shelf,” said CEO Kacper Nowicki, who co-founded the company with Marek Cygan (CTO) and Tristan d’Orgeval (CSO).
The company has instead focused on the software. Using computer vision, machine learning and other kinds of automation, it has essentially built a “library” of different objects and how to move, pack and handle them.
The robots are powered by Nomagic’s AI to perform across a wide range of use cases, and can be redeployed relatively easily on a case-by-case basis. This is in contrast to how a lot of robotic arms have been built and are operated, Nowicki said. D’Orgeval admitted it’s “contrarian,” but Nomagic has no interest in building humanoid robots, since a lot of the moving parts are best served by wheels in industrial spaces.
The company says it has increased its annual recurring revenues by 220% in the last year (although it’s not disclosing an actual number), and says it’s on track for another 200% growth this year thanks to demand from new and existing customers in verticals like e-commerce and pharmaceuticals.
Its customers include Apo.com, Arvato, Asos, Brack, Fiege, Komplett and Vetlog.one, the company said.
Nomagic’s closest competitor, Covariant, last year was the subject of an interesting acqui-hire deal with Amazon.
The e-commerce leviathan, known to be a big investor in robotics for its own warehouses, in July 2024 hired Covariant’s founders and worked out a major licensing deal with the startup. It was not a full acquisition, to be clear — Covariant is still operating as an independent company — but as a ballpark of what Nomagic’s valuation might be, Covariant reportedly was last valued in 2022 at around $625 million.
“Amazon ‘acquired’ because it’s a hard problem to solve, and they couldn’t solve it,” said Gulati at Khosla. “And that is Amazon. It shows that there is a huge opportunity for a company like Nomagic worldwide.”
Companies like Nomagic, Covariant and others in the space like Berkshire Grey and RightHand Robotics are developing their tech at a time when robotics is increasingly making its mark in industrial environments.
Big players like Nvidia and SoftBank (which acquired Berkshire Grey in 2023) have identified the opportunity to build for the market, underscored by two currents: large companies are slowly upgrading legacy equipment; and they are making a lot of noise around big bets that they and their partners will be building physical spaces for manufacturing and logistics that will be greenfield opportunities for new equipment.
The role of government is not to be underestimated in this trend: The U.K., the European Union, the U.S. and other regions are all calling for more investment into industry, and they will be putting ever more money behind that order.
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