When you stop at the loading dock, you can hear loaded forklifts moving in and out of trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers with nothing to do.
The founders of Atlanta-based Slip Robotics say they have developed a robot that cuts that time to five minutes. Their design inspiration is the floor.
Founded in 2020 by Chris Smith, Dennis Siedlak, and John Jakomin, Slip Robotics is a commercial robot-as-a-service business that combines automation software with a large floor robot platform that can hold up to 10 pallets and pallets. Developed and launched. Can carry up to 12,000 lbs. According to the company, these so-called slipbots can handle uneven ground and navigate routes from warehouse floors to truck trailers. Three SlipBots (approximately 36,000 pounds capacity) fit into one truck trailer. When the truck reaches its destination, the SlipBot disembarks.
The idea behind SlipBots was born, in part, from Smith's combined experience at former employers Cummins, Tesla, and Volley Automation, a robotics startup that developed an autonomous parking system . His time at Tesla, where he led factory simulation and analysis and was one of the first 50 engineers at the Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, was particularly influential.
All of this led to a strange thought: “What if I built a floor and it moved?” Freight is typically placed on the floor for staging and lifted by a forklift. Smith's idea was to place cargo on the robot's floor-like platform and move it all at once.
After three years of development and testing, Slip Robotics launched commercial services in 2023. Hundreds of SlipBots are currently in use across more than 25 facilities, ranging in size from 20,000 square feet to more than 2 million square feet. Commerce Director Jordan Saunders told TechCrunch. Customers include John Deere, GE Appliances, Valeo, Nissan, and more.
Slip Robotics customers pay a subscription license fee to use SlipBot, which includes ongoing software updates, hardware service, maintenance, and repairs. Saunders said customers typically have a “3, 3, 3” setup. This means that customers always have 3 bots on the dock, 3 in transit, and 3 waiting at their destination.
Bots and their business models are also attracting investors. Just a few weeks ago, Slip Robotics closed on $28 million in Series B funding, the company announced on Tuesday. The round was led by DCVC, with participation from existing investors Eve Atlas, Tech Square Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Overline, and Pathbreak Ventures. DCVC's James Hardiman joins the board, which includes Thiago Olson, co-founder of Slip and managing partner of EVE Atlas.
The company has raised $45 million to date. Slip did not share that assessment.
Sanders said the new capital will be used to hire more employees, increase deployment and strengthen product offerings. He emphasized that Slip Robotics' success to date is a credit not only to the product, but also to how the startup chooses to scale.
“People have come to expect a lot of hype and 'smoke and mirrors' about the state of technology development and actual commercial scale of robotics companies,” Sanders wrote in an email to TechCrunch. “This expectation and implicit skepticism is unfortunate, but based on the hype and unfulfilled promises of the past decade, it is entirely justified.”
He said Slip Robotics didn't try to scale up too soon, kept quiet and focused on developing its robotic platform. That approach appears to have worked. The company, which once had fewer than a dozen employees, has now grown to about 50 employees. Importantly, he noted that Slip Robotics currently has 10 commercial customers and hundreds of bots in the field.
“If you have more engineers in your office than vehicles that generate revenue in the real world, it's not a real business,” Sanders quipped.