Formic, a Chicago company that rents robots to American factories, has raised $50M. Today its robots are built for specific tasks. The money will help it move to general-purpose machines that can take on more kinds of factory work. Axios first reported the round on Thursday, after chief executive Saman Farid spoke to Natalie Breymeyer. Formic announced it the same day.
The money combines a Series B led by Mercato Partners with debt financing from S2G Investments. Formic did not say how the $50M splits between the two. Light Ray Ventures, Lightscape Partners and Citi also invested. Lux Capital, Initialized Capital, Blackhorn Ventures and Lorimer Ventures put in more money too. Early investor Stephan Cizmar named them on LinkedIn.
“Building a capable robot and making it productive in a real factory are two very different challenges,” Farid said in a statement.
Robots for a monthly fee
Formic, founded in 2020, sells what it calls Robot-as-a-Service. Customers pay one monthly fee for the robots, the software, maintenance and financing, with no upfront cost. Formic takes responsibility for keeping the machines running.
The company says it runs hundreds of robots in more than 100 facilities across over 30 states. They palletise, pack cases, tend machines and assemble kits for food, packaging, chemicals, aerospace and defence customers. Formic says its fleet has logged more than 750,000 hours of live production. It reports 99.6% uptime, and says 97% of customers renew. TNW has not verified those figures.
“As robots get smarter, the bottleneck moves from the lab to the loading dock: deploying, servicing and financing robots in real plants,” said Ryan Sanders, managing director at Mercato Partners, who joins Formic’s board.
From one task to many
The next step is general-purpose robotics. Formic is working with Physical Intelligence to adapt that company’s robot foundation models for factory work, using Formic’s production data. Physical Intelligence mentioned the work when it opened its API in beta.
A video with the announcement shows a humanoid robot packing bags into a box. It works next to a Formic palletiser. Formic calls it an early look at the shift. It also plans to move into metal fabrication and to do more in aerospace, space, defence, medical and energy.
The company assembles and tests its robots at a new site in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and runs research in Oakland, California. It says it now puts robots into production about three times faster than a year ago.
Who gets the value
The physical AI boom raises a question, Axios noted: whether the value lies in building robots and models or in putting them to work. Robot makers such as Agility are fitting Nvidia computers into humanoids, and Google is building software for factory robots. Others sell the data, such as Maxinsights, which raised $30M this week. Formic says its business is putting them to work.
Shawn Fitzgerald is Formic’s chief marketing officer. He wrote on LinkedIn that one in two US citizens has eaten or used a product packed or stacked by its robots this year. TNW has not verified that figure.