Plus One Robotics, provider of AI vision software and solutions for robotic parcel handling, announced that it has raised $50M in Series C funding. This brings the company’s total funding to date to nearly $100 million. Plus One’s technology aims to alleviate the persistent shortage of manual labor through robotic solutions, streamlining the parcel picking and depalletizing processes.
Currently Plus One claims its deployments perform over one million parcel picks each day in production and more than half a billion parcel picks globally. With these new funds, Plus One will further increase its capacity and rapidly scale deployment, as well as expand its sales and marketing efforts in North America and internationally.
This expansion builds on Plus One Robotics’ existing relationships with customers in the parcel post, logistics, and general merchandise industries, serving customers that include FedEx, MSC Industrial, and many more.
The Labor Problem
“The labor shortage is hitting the shipping industry hard, and parcel picking is an often overlooked yet essential part of the process,” said Scale Partner Rory O’Driscoll. “By automating the parcel handling piece, Plus One Robotics is rapidly modernizing an outdated system that’s no longer sustainable. It is stepping up and leading the way in a $128 billion market, with fundamentals that prove its value.”
E-commerce has grown to represent 19% of U.S. retail sales, with approximately 20 billion parcels delivered in the U.S. in 2021. Shipping growth is expected to rise by 25% over the next five years resulting in warehouses and distribution centers not having the workforce to keep up.
On the supply side, over 80% of warehouses are manual, and with the demands placed on shipping expected to grow, there will be over 1 million more jobs to fill by 2025 despite the shrinking of available labor sources – and costs are rising. Labor costs average $25 per hour and continue to increase. This creates a perfect storm threatening the supply chain and impeding future e-commerce growth.
