Chef Robotics raises $43.1 Mn led by Avataar Ventures

Entrackr · 2d

Chef Robotics, creators of AI-enabled robotic systems for meal assembly, has raised $43.1 million in new Series A funding, including $20.6 million in equity and $22.5 million in equipment financing debt. The equity round was led by Avataar Ventures and included investments from Construct Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Promus Ventures, MFV Partners, Interwoven Ventures, HCVC, MaC Venture Capital, Red and Blue Ventures, Tau Partners, Alumni Ventures, Siddhi Capital, and BOLD Capital Partners. The funding round will allow Chef to accelerate production deployments of its robotic systems, providing momentum for the real-world AI data engine flywheel that the company credits for its rapid growth rate of meals produced. The debt will be used to finance Chef's robotic systems for Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS), ensuring that Chef's customers do not have to front CapEx for their robots. The new funding brings Chef's total capital raised to $65.6 million, which includes $26.75 million in equipment financing, all with Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank. Chef claims to have produced over 44 million servings through robot deployments at brands such as Amy's Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay, and Cafe Spice. The data collected from each meal assembled is used to train its AI models. "Robotics is really having a moment right now. The innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of Embodied AI for robotics. We believe we're in the pole position to scale, given all the real-world production training data we already have," says Rajat Bhageria, Founder and CEO of Chef Robotics.