Ultra raises $62m for warehouse robots it rents by the month, with Physical Intelligence supplying the AI, Fortune reports

Ultra Robotics, a Brooklyn startup, announced on Friday 9 October that it had raised $62 million, Fortune reports. That is a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, on top of an earlier $12 million seed round led by Y Combinator and Next View. Neither Fortune nor SiliconANGLE gives a valuation, and Ultra's own release was not found, so the figures are as reported.

Ultra makes the OP1 Operator: a two-armed upper body on a wheeled base that plugs into a standard wall outlet. It sorts inbound containers, kits orders, seals packages and adds shipping labels. SiliconANGLE reports Ultra's claims that it can be set up in a few hours and can handle up to 1,000 items per day.

The business model is rental. Fortune describes a monthly “robots as a service” model: customers, mainly third-party logistics warehouses, pay an up-front integration fee and then an ongoing monthly fee. Fortune says Ultra's robots have packed more than half a million orders for shipping; it gives no revenue and names no customers.

The AI comes from Physical Intelligence, the robot-model startup, which supplies the models that let the robots learn each site and gets real-world data back to train on. Terms were not disclosed. Ultra's chief executive and co-founder, Jon Miller Schwartz, is quoted by SiliconANGLE: “The robots that are actually changing the world are the ones doing valuable work for real people.” The pitch is that non-humanoid robots earning rent now may matter more, for the next few years, than humanoids still in demos.

• Reported Fortune reports Ultra raised $62 million: a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures with Y Combinator, and an earlier $12 million seed led by Y Combinator and Next View. Fortune
• Claimed Ultra says its OP1 Operator can be set up in a few hours and handle up to 1,000 items per day. SiliconANGLE
• Reported Fortune reports Physical Intelligence supplies the robots' AI models and receives real-world data in return. Fortune