There’s a new trend in the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund. The new head expressed further support for generative AI, and they even invested in an undisclosed generative AI startup, saying the company’s technology could have a significant impact on robotics.

In 2013, Amazon had only 1,000 robots. Ten years on, today’s Amazon has deployed more than 750,000 + bots to unlock AI opportunities. They are testing a variety of advanced robotics technologies that are not only about efficiency, but also about reshaping the way humans and machines collaborate.

In 2022, Amazon set up a $1 billion Industrial Innovation Fund, a venture capital program designed to support emerging technology companies through direct investments. The fund’s first investments went to five startups, including Agility Robotics, which is building bipedal walking robots; BionicHIVE is a company developing autonomous robots that can be adapted to existing warehouse infrastructure; Mantis Robotics is developing tactile robotic arms.

The Amazon Innovation Fund got off to a slow start, investing just $110 million in start-ups in its first year. Since the spring of 2023, With the support of computer vision company Flymingo (March 2023), Veo Robotics (April 2023), industrial wireless automation startup CoreTigo (June 2023), Rightbot (December 2023), and With Instock’s (December 2023) investment, the pace seems to have picked up. Amazon continues to pour that money into nearly a dozen U.S. and Israeli startups, focusing on logistics, supply chain and customer service.

Veo is a Massachusetts-based robot safety solution that aims to help humans and robots coexist in the workplace. Veo’s flagship product, FreeMove, is a comprehensive 3D protection solution Enables humans to work closely with a full range of industrial robots from FANUC, Yaskawa Motoman, ABB, Kawasaki and Kuka – FreeMove sends a stop signal to the robot if the distance between humans and the robot exceeds the system’s protective Interval distance (PSD). Once the person is out of the PSD and the violation is cleared, the system allows the robot to safely restart.

Veo is a robotics security software solution based in Massachusetts

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The diverse and unpredictable nature of unstructured truck and container loading has been a challenge for unloading automation. In this regard, there are also many strong robot companies, such as Boston Dynamics, Mujin and so on. In December 2023, Amazon Industrial Fund invested in Rightbot, a startup developing suction based robots. Their robot can use conveyor belts, a mechanical arm equipped with suction cups, and a camera with computer vision – especially algorithms trained on “thousands” of hours of footage of the warehouse environment – to pick up packages and place them within arm’s reach in cargo unloading scenarios such as trucks, trailers, and container ships.

Rightbot is developing a system to unload containers automatically

In addition to Rightbot, Amazon Industrial Fund also led a seed round of funding late last year for Instock, a SAN Carlos, Calif.-based startup focused on customer fulfillment robots. They have designed a robotic storage and retrieval system that provides efficient inventory management and is unique in that it can be easily retrofitted into existing environments for plug-and-play automation across a variety of building types.

An upside-down Instock AMR grabs a dumpster from another AMR

Franziska Bossart recently joined Amazon to lead the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund. The new head said in an interview with the media that the fund recently invested in an undisclosed generative AI startup whose technology could have a significant impact on robotics.

While Amazon’s adoption of AI is nothing new, Bossart believes there is huge potential to apply generative AI in robotics and automation. Machine learning is a form of AI, where computer systems learn from data, and is already being used in robotics. Bossart is looking for startups that use generative AI, a technology that leverages trained models to create new information and data that can be applied to perception, manipulation, and control to increase automation. In other words, generative AI can be used to help bring all the pieces in robotics and automation together to make it more powerful.

It’s also an opportunity for start-ups, she notes. Because one of the biggest challenges these startups face is getting access to large data sets, and Amazon has one of the largest data sets.