GE, Caterpillar Invest in Material Handling Robot Firm

Caterpillar, General Electric, and a handful of other investors are providing Clearpath Robotics with $30 million in funding to expand the firm’s industrial division, OTTO Motors, the Kitchener, ON-based company announced Oct. 5.

Clearpath’s OTTO Motors makes automated, self-driving vehicles for material transport and handling in factories and warehouses. The iNovia Capital-led investment, involving Caterpillar Ventures, GE Ventures, Eclipse Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank, will help the company develop new self-driving software.

“The market for self-driving passenger vehicles will be over $80 billion by 2030,” said Clearpath’s co-founder and chief executive officer Matt Rendall in the release. “We believe the market for self-driving materials handling vehicles will be equally sufficient. 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.”

The company, which launched OTTO Motors in 2015, said its self-driving material handling vehicles will help meet a labor shortage anticipated in the coming decade. OTTO Motors’ products are used in facilities owned by top-tier companies like GE and John Deere. Powder & Bulk Solids previously reported in April that GE Healthcare is using some of the self-driving vehicles at one of its facilities.

“Factories operate like small indoor cities, complete with roads, traffic, intersections, and pedestrians,” said Rendall. “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.”

In January 2015, Clearpath raised $11.2 million in a Series A round of funding spearheaded by RRE Ventures, with participation from iNovia Capital, GE Ventures, and Eclipse Ventures.

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