• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • COVID-19
    • Delivery & Commerce
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future of Drink
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Podcasts
    • Startups
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Send us a Tip
    • Spoon Newsletters
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • The Spoon Food Tech Survey Panel
  • Advertise
  • About
    • Staff
  • Become a Member
The Spoon
  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Slack
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Become a Member

Tally ho! Simbe Robotics Raises $26M for its Inventory-bot

by Chris Albrecht
September 12, 2019September 12, 2019Filed under:
  • Future of Grocery
  • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Simbe Robotics, which makes the autonomous Tally inventory robot for retailers, announced today that it has raised a $26 million Series A round of funding led by Venrock with participation from Future Shape, Valo Ventures, and Activant Capital. Additionally, Simbe also announced today that it is expanding its existing partnership with SoftBank Robotics America to include inventory financing to scale the manufacturing of an additional 1,000 Tally robots over the next two years.

Tally is an autonomous robot that roams store aisles using computer vision and RFID to scan shelves to check on inventory. It’s part of a suite of services from Simbe that provides analytics about purchases and insights about re-stocking management. Simbe provides the hardware for free and charges a monthly subscription for the software and analytics. So far, Tally has been put to work in trials at Giant Eagle and Schnuck’s grocery store chains.

Tally is just one of the robots coming to a grocer near you. Earlier this year, Walmart announced it would expand Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robots to 300 locations, and Ahold Delhaize ordered 500 “Marty” floor roaming robots from Badger Technologies.

While retailers may like the fact that robots are faster and more precise than humans (and the fact that they don’t take breaks or call in sick), there are still a lot of kinks that need to be worked out with robots. As we’ve written before, robots can make their human co-workers enjoy their jobs less, and shoppers don’t know how to interact with a cold, silent, sentinel (even if they have googley eyes).

Additionally, how long will robots be necessary for things like inventory management? Walmart debuted its IRL store earlier this summer which features banks of cameras installed and computer vision to keep a real-time eye on what’s in stock.

However, retrofitting a store with the cameras, software and sensors needed to keep track of inventory in that way is expensive and will take a long time. So until then, robots like Tally will probably find a place among the produce at plenty of retailers.


Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • grocery stores
  • retail
  • Robotics
  • robots
  • Simbe

Post navigation

Previous Post FoodNetwork.com’s Michelle Buffardi on Why Recipes (and Cooking) Won’t Be Obsolete
Next Post Magic Spoon Raises $5.5M Seed Round for Its Healthy Take on Sweet Cereal

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

Subscribe to Our Podcast!

Subscribe in iTunes or listen on Spotify.

W&P’s Reuseable Silicone Bags Are Quite Useful
Podcast: The Future Grocery Store
What’s After Ghost Kitchens? The Ghost Bar, Of Course
Instacart Expands Curbside Pickup Options for Retailers
Vertical Field Signs Agreement to Bring Controlled Ag to the UAE

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2021 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.