Clobotics completes $30MM capital raise to fund the continued acceleration of business results
Clobotics announced today that the company has completed its Series Pre-B-4 capital raise and received an additional $30 million of investment towards its goal of “turning sight into insight” for customers in the wind and retail point of sale industries. Clobotics uses computer vision technology to help customers in two industry verticals:
- For consumer packaged goods firms and retailers, Clobotics Retail Insights as a Service collects
market intelligence by transforming physical retail settings to digital data and insight, enabling
customers to make near-real-time decisions to optimize the marketing mix. - For wind turbine manufacturers and owners, Clobotics Wind Services conducts drone-based
inspections of blades and towers which is an integral part of maintenance budget planning and can also inform optimization of energy yield.
“We are grateful to our investors for the confidence they are showing in Clobotics and we are
proud of our product and business results to date,” said Clobotics CEO George Yan. “This
additional investment will enable important new company initiatives including expansion of
our wind industry business into the Americas region under the leadership of our new
Managing Director, Rogers Weed as well as significantly advancing our retail technology and
product development, and increasing commercial capacity to serve new markets and clients on
the ground.”
The investment round was led by Sanxia Xintai, a leading growth fund in China specializing in
technology-driven companies. Other co-investors include existing shareholders as well as two
more new investors.
“George and the team at Clobotics have made impressive progress in their first four years as a
company,” said Fanny Cheng, Partner at CDIB Capital. “Their approach to innovation – investing
in both the front-end data capture systems as well as the back end machine learning
technology – is enabling important new capabilities for their customers. We are pleased to
continue providing the funding support to help them scale their world class solutions to the
next level.”
Company Background
Clobotics was founded in late 2016 by four ex-Microsoft executives. The company has been global from the beginning with offices and engineering teams in both Seattle and Shanghai. Its mission is to digitalize, analyze, automate and predict to empower customers in the industry verticals it serves.
Business highlights to date include:
• Three full releases of the company’s end to end system for inspecting wind turbines and
delivering analysis and reports to customers, including the Clobotics IBISTM customized drone for autonomous visual inspection of wind turbine blades and the Clobotics IRISTM back end for rapidly analyzing images to understand blade conditions and generate reports and recommendations for customers.
• Development and release of the Retail Execution Assistant smartphone application and the SmartViewTM Cooler door-mounted, internet-connected camera for enabling rapid in-store image capture that is uploaded to Clobotics IRISTM for analysis to track in-store execution and inform retail marketing strategy.
• Over 14,000 wind turbines inspected around the world for global brands including Goldwind, Vestas and GE Renewable Energy.
• Over 1.5 billion on-shelf SKU’s tracked for consumer packaged goods leaders such as Procter & Gamble and Coca Cola as well as retailers such as Walmart and Wushang.
“Clobotics has become a valuable technology partner for us,” said Reiner Becker, Commercial Director at Coca Cola. “Their Visual Intelligent Cooler (VIC) service is providing a level of insight into our complex retail environments that was not possible before now.”
