Although the COVID-19 pandemic began last year in Wuhan, China, it began slowing the global economy in earnest last month. As businesses and authorities scrambled to manage the fast-spreading virus, investments in robotics and related technologies continued, with more than $2.7 billion in reported transactions in March 2020.

The majority of that amount was investment in self-driving car company Waymo early in March, when the economic slowdown was just beginning in some countries and industries. The COVID-19 crisis has also provided opportunities for some providers of robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, and artificial intelligence.

Investment activity had already begun slowing in East Asia earlier this year, particularly in manufacturing center China, which is reportedly starting to recover. When Europe, North America, and the rest of the world pass the worst in terms of infections and shutdowns depends largely on local governments and remains to be seen.

The Robot Report tracked 29 investments in March 2020, compared with 43 worth $1.3 billion in March 2019 and 18 worth $1.9 billion in February 2020. The table below lists fundings in millions of U.S. dollars, where amounts were publicly available.

Robotics Investments, March 2020

Company	Amt. (M$)	Type	Investor, acquirer, partner	Date	Technology
AirMap	31.76	investment		March 25	drone mapping
AIsing	6.5	Series B	Sparx Group, Dai-ichi Life Insurance	March 30	AI
Altaeros Energies Inc.		investment	Mirai Creation Fund II	March 18	autonomous aerostat
Blickfield		Series A	Contineental Venture Capital, Wachstumsfonds Bayern	March 20	lidar
Bouffalo Lab		Series B	Sequoia Capital China	March 5	AIoT chips
CRP Robot	14	Series B	Shanghai Grand Yangtze Capital	March 6	industrial automation
Dexai Robotics	5.5	seed	Hyperplane Venture Capital	March 5	kitchen automation
Diligent Robotics Inc.	10	Series A	DNX Ventures	March 20	hopital robot
Embodied Inc.	9.6	investment	Vulcan Capital	March 27	AI, service robots
FiveAI Ltd.	41	Series B	Trustbridge Partners, Direct Line Group, Sistema VC	March 3	autonomous vehicles
ForwardX	14.95	Series B+	Hupan Licheng Fund	March 21	mobile robots
Hailo	60	Series B	ABB Technology Ventures, NEC Corp., Latitude Ventures	March 5	AI chips
Helm.ai Inc.	13	seed	A.Capital Ventures	March 25	self-driving cars
Internest		pre-Series A	Boundary Holding	March 27	drone guidance
Keenon Robotics	28.5	Series B	Source Code Capital	March 9	mobile service robots
Lilium	240	investment	Tencent	March 22	autonomous air taxis
Mech-Mind Robotics Technologies Ltd.	14	Series B	Sequoia Capital China	March 2	industrial automation
Neolix	28.7	Series A+	Lixiang Automotive, Addor Capital, Yunqi Partners, Glory Ventures	March 8	delivery robot
OrthoSpin Ltd.	5	Series B	Thee Trendlines Group, JJDC Inc.	March 31	orthopedic treatment
RoboticsPlus.AI	7.13	Series A	Dragonrise Capital, Linear Venture Capital	March 24	motion control
SFMap	14	Series A	Everest Venture Capital	March 25	AI mapping
Shanghai Yitu Technology Co.	30	investment	CR Capital Management, China Chengtong Hong Kong	March 20	AI
Silc Technologies Inc.	12	seed	Dell Capital	March 5	machine vision
Skyports Ltd.	0.796	Series A	Irelandia Aviation	March 9	drone delivery
SwarmFarm Robtics	3.45	investment		March 19	autonomous tractors
Teleo (Electronic Equipment and Instruments)	0.15	seed	Y Combinator	March 16	mobile robots
TransEnterix Surgical Inc.		IPO	Ladenburg Thalmann & Co.	March 5	surgical
Waymo	2250	investment	Silver Lake, CPP Investments, Mubadala Investment Co.	March 2	autonomous vehicles

March 2020 mergers and failures

Just as the number of reported robotics investments started to drop, so too have mergers and acquisitions. There was only one in March 2020, compared with six in February and 16 a year ago.

Yokogawa Electric Corp. bought Danish AI and machine vision firm Grazper Technologies for an unspecified amount.

Even though there has been a sharp rise in U.S. unemployment, some executives are already looking ahead to resuming mergers and acquisitions, according to PitchBook.

In the meantime, two robotics companies shut down in March 2020 because they ran out of funding, not because they might have been considered “non-essential” businesses. San Francisco-based autonomous truck startup Starsky Robotics and Malden, Mass.-based hybrid drone power-supply provider Top Flight Technologies Inc. closed.

Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, co-founder and former CEO of Starsky Robotics blamed impatient investors and “non-sexy” AI development for the failure, but other self-driving vehicle companies are continuing to work on systems for delivery and carrying passengers. Sources confirmed that Top Flight Technologies has released its employees and is looking to sell its intellectual property.

Self-driving vehicles keep on rolling, flying

As mentioned above, Alphabet Inc. unit Waymo LLC raised $2.25 billion in its first external round. The Mountain View, Calif.-based self-driving car company said it plans to continue investing in people and technologies around its Waymo Driver product.

Munich, Germany-based Lilium raised $240 million in March 2020 to build and operate an autonomous air taxi. London-based Skyports Ltd. raised $796,000 in Series A funding to acquire “vertiports” and bring its urban and rural drone-delivery services to market.

Altaeros Energies Inc. in Somerville, Mass., said it has received an unspecified investment for its autonomous aerostat platforms for bringing broadband Internet to rural communities.

Back on the ground, London-based FiveAI Ltd. raised Series B funding of $41 million to commercialize its autonomy algorithms and cloud-based processing platform. Helm.ai Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., received seed investment of $13 million to develop its deep-learning systems for self-driving cars.

On the supply chain side, Beijing-based Neolix raised $28.7 million to meet demand for its driverless delivery robot.

Component companies collect funding in March 2020

While autonomous vehicles have received the lion’s share of funding lately, the past month was a good one for companies supplying sensors, processors, and programming for such vehicles and robotics.

ABB Technology Ventures, NEC Corp., and Latitude Ventures participated the $60 million Series B investment in Hailo in Tel Aviv, Israel. The company is working on a neural network processor for edge devices such as robots.

Shanghai, China-based Yitu Technology Co. raised $30 million as it applies AI to machine vision, voice interfaces, and comprehension.

SiLC Technologies Inc. in Monrovia, Calif., closed a $12 million seed round in March 2020. The company is working on its 4D+ Vision Chip, which it claimed is the industry’s first fully integrated frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) silicon photonic platform.

Japan’s AIsing raised $6.5 million in Series B funding to advance its Algorithm Development Group, which is working on edge AI software. Pudong, China-based Buffalo Lab raised “tens of millions of dollars” for its “AIoT” ultra-low-power chips in a Series B round, reported DealStreet Asia.

As these investments demonstrate, pushing processing to the edge is becoming a popular way of pre-processing data for compute in the cloud. The effect of 5G networks on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and AI could accelerate this approach.

Munich-based lidar sensor maker Blickfield raised an unspecified amount of Series A funding.

Industrial and service robots see smaller growth

Reflecting the slowdown in manufacturing, two Chinese companies raised over 100 million yuan ($14 million) each in the only investment activity in that sector this past month. Beijing-based Mech-Mind Robotics Technology obtained Series B financing for its robots for bin picking and machine tending.

Chengdu-based CRP Robot raised Series B funding as it continues its expansion from robot controllers to robots for welding, stamping, and materials handling.

Slowdowns vary considerably by region. “In Mexico, automotive manufacturing is not viewed as essential, as in the U.S. and Canada,” noted Mike Cicco, president and CEO of FANUC America, during an Association for Advancing Automation (A3) webinar today. “Other industries are still producing goods.”

Gindie, Australia-based SwarmFarm Robotics raised 6 million Australian dollars ($3.45 million U.S.) to grow its global ambitions for its agricultural robots. It has sold six units so far.

Shanghai-based Keenon Robotics Co., whose Peanut mobile robots are among those being used to deliver food and minimize human contact during the novel coronavirus pandemic, received $28.5 million in a Series B round.

Beijing-based ForwardX said it raised $14.9 million in Series B+ funding for its vision-guided autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) for warehouses.

Like Miso Robotics Inc., which opened its crowdfunding campaign for kitchen automation this week, Somerville, Mass.-based Dexai Robotics announced an “oversubscribed $5.5 million seed round” for its food-preparation robot. Such robots are expected to be in high demand, as hygiene and labor concerns rise.

Healthcare and service robot firms expect growth

In March 2020, there were not many healthcare robotics transactions, but that could change in the near future with shortages of trained personnel and the need for “social distancing.”

Austin, Texas-based Diligent Robotics, which has been working on the Moxi mobile manipulator, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Meanwhile, OrthoSpin Ltd. in Misgav, Israel, raised $5 million for its robotic orthopedic treatment system.

TransEnterix Surgical Inc. announced an initial public offering. The company in Research Triangle Park, N.C., has developed the Senhance robotic surgical system. Its Intelligent Surgical Unit for machine vision guidance received FDA approval in March 2020.

Automakers and other manufacturers are switching over production lines to fill shortages of personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other healthcare technologies, and many industry experts expect both awareness and investments to continue beyond the COVID-19 crisis.

“There’s a real opportunity [for the public to see] robots at the forefront, doing great things,” said Milton Guerry, president of Schunk USA and of the International Federation of Robotics, during the A3 webcast. “So many things are disrupted right now, but the most successful companies will take a good look at automation.”

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Editors’ note: What defines robotics investments? The answer to this simple question is central in any attempt to quantify them with some degree of rigor. To make investment analyses consistent, repeatable, and valuable, it is critical to wring out as much subjectivity as possible during the evaluation process. This begins with a definition of terms and a description of assumptions.

Investors and investing
Investment should come from venture capital firms, corporate investment groups, angel investors, and other sources. Friends-and-family investments, government/non-governmental agency grants, and crowd-sourced funding are excluded.

Robotics and intelligent systems companies
Robotics companies must generate or expect to generate revenue from the production of robotics products (that sense, analyze, and act in the physical world), hardware or software subsystems and enabling technologies for robots, or services supporting robotics devices. For this analysis, autonomous vehicles (including technologies that support autonomous driving) and drones are considered robots, while 3D printers, CNC systems, and various types of “hard” automation are not.

Companies that are “robotic” in name only, or use the term “robot” to describe products and services that that do not enable or support devices acting in the physical world, are excluded. For example, this includes “software robots” and robotic process automation. Many firms have multiple locations in different countries. Company locations given in the analysis are based on the publicly listed headquarters in legal documents, press releases, etc.

Verification
Funding information is collected from a number of public and private sources. These include press releases from corporations and investment groups, corporate briefings, industry analysts such as PitchBook, and association and industry publications. In addition, information comes from sessions at conferences and seminars, as well as during private interviews with industry representatives, investors, and others. Unverifiable investments are excluded.