Nymble Labs announced yesterday that it has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-Series A money for its countertop cooking robot dubbed Julia. Investors in the round include WaterBridge Ventures, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and 021 Capital.
Inc42 reports that Bengaluru, India-based Nymble Labs combines robotics, machine learning and the internet of things to create the Julia. The device sits on a countertop and has different compartments for various vegetables, grains, meats and more, and can make bowl or pan-based meals like curries, noodles and turf rice. Julia will come with at least 150 pre-loaded recipes on its app at launch, and will use a combination of sensors and a camera to ensure proper cooking.
The new funding will go towards finishing the development of the Julia, which Nymble aims to launch in the U.S. in 2020. No mention of price.
Nymble Labs had a booth at the Startup Showcase at CES last month (see picture above), but it wasn’t doing any live demos. What Nymble brought actually didn’t feel that far along, so it’s heartening to see that it was at least at a stage where they could attract investors.
The Julia isn’t alone in its automated cooking ambitions. Over in Croatia, GammaChef is building a similar countertop robot that stores, adds, mixes and cooks up ingredients automatically. Elsewhere in India, Zimplistic’s Rotimatic is a countertop flatbread-making robot that can automatically whip up rotis, tortillas, pizza crust and is arguably the most successful home food robot in the world right now.
While we love all this home robot proliferation, the typical kitchen is a zero sum game. There just isn’t room for all these devices unless you re-architect your kitchen to be all countertop space. There will be home cooking robot winners and losers, now we’ll have to see if Julia can justify a place in people’s homes.
If you’re into food robots, you should definitely come to our ArticulATE food robot and automation summit happening in San Francisco on April 16th!
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