The self-driving vehicle solutions firm Clearpath Robotics has announced the successful completion of a new $30 million round of investment led by iNovia Capital, but also with participation from GE Ventures, Caterpillar Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank.
The new investment funding will reportedly be used by the company to expand its industrial division — which is known as OTTO Motors (launched in 2015). The division is focused on the supply of self-driving vehicles for the manufacturing and warehousing sectors (indoor materials transport, etc.). The company anticipates rapid growth in the sector over the coming years.
“Factories operate like small indoor cities, complete with roads, traffic, intersections, and pedestrians,” stated Matt Rendall, CEO and co-founder of Clearpath. “Unlike city streets, a factory floor is a controlled environment, which makes it an ideal place to introduce self-driving vehicles at scale. Companies like Google, Tesla, and Uber are still testing, whereas our self-driving vehicles are commercially available today.”
GE, John Deere, and others already utilize some of OTTO’s material handling technologies in some of their facilities.
“The market for self-driving passenger vehicles will be over $80 billion by 2030,” Rendall continued. “We believe the market for self-driving materials handling vehicles will be equally significant. Clearpath has a big head start, and this new funding will allow us to further accelerate the development of the best self-driving software in the industry — and bring more OTTOs into the world faster.”
A partner at iNovia Capital by the name of Karam Nijjar commented on the investment: “Software-differentiated hardware will disrupt every major sector over the next decade. Self-driving vehicles are already revolutionizing transportation. Clearpath has built a world-class team, technology and customer base to accelerate that vision. Clearpath isn’t just building the factory of the future; they are laying the foundation for entirely new business models enabled by artificial intelligence, autonomy and automation.”