Starship Technologies has raised $25 million (€21.4m) in additional seed funding and appointed ex-Airbnb manager Lex Bayer as Chief Executive Officer to lead a bigger rollout of the company’s ground-based delivery robots.
The financing round includes follow-on investments from existing investors including Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures. Additional investors include Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn, and former chairman and CEO of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Gary Barber.
Starship co-founder Janus Friis commented “We are at the point where we are ready to start deploying our network of robots at scale. This additional funding, and Lex’s appointment, will allow us to bring our services to market. Lex joins us with a proven track record of growing businesses that change the way we live for the better.”
“Today’s announcement represents a major milestone,” concluded Starship co-founder and CTO Ahti Heinla. “With the start of our commercial rollout, additional funding and Lex joining the team, we are ready to take the business to new heights”.
The new Starship CEO, Lex Bayer, said: “I’m delighted to join the Starship team at this inflection point in the company’s journey and look forward to helping the business build on its position as the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery. This additional funding will allow us to deploy our robots in neighbourhoods as well as corporate and university campuses in the US and Europe.”
In April, the company announced a major commercial rollout of its self-driving delivery robots for corporate and academic campuses across the USA and Europe, with over 1,000 robots to deployed by the end of 2018. Robots developed by Starship Technologies have now covered over 100,000 miles around the world in 20 countries and over 100 cities, encountering over 15 million people along the way, according to the company.
“Starship Technologies has demonstrated that it has the potential to transform the industry. Autonomous delivery isn’t tomorrow’s reality – it’s today’s,” said Matrix Partner’s Hardi Meybaum. “We’ve been impressed by Starship’s ability to deliver its services to partners on both sides of the Atlantic” said Kristian Blaszcynski of Morpheus Ventures. “Starship’s current deployments on campuses and neighbourhoods in the U.S. and the U.K. point to the future of delivery.”
Bayer joins Starship from Airbnb where he led the Business Development, Payments and Airbnb for Businesses functions of the company. Since joining Airbnb in 2013, the business saw a growth in guest arrivals from 6 million to over 100 million people during a four-year period. Prior to joining Airbnb, Bayer founded online payments company Spare Change Payments and served as CEO until its acquisition by PlaySpan in 2009. After the sale, he served as a key part of PlaySpan team that took the business through triple-digit growth, a Series C funding round and its eventual acquisition by Visa Inc. in March 2011 for over $190M.
