Ultra raises $62 million to rent warehouse robots "by subscription" and teams up with Physical Intelligence
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Published in SI: . Updated: .
Robots are entering warehouses by subscription rather than sale — this makes it easier for companies to move from trial to mass use.
According to Fortune, Brooklyn startup Ultra has raised $62 million: a $50 million Series A led by Framework Ventures with Y Combinator participating, and an earlier $12 million seed round. The company rents warehouse robots by subscription — a one-time integration fee plus monthly support; the SI part, in a "body and brain" design, comes from Physical Intelligence (valued at $5.6 billion), which gets real-work data in return. According to CEO Jon Miller Schwartz, Ultra's robots have handled more than half a million orders; humanoids, in his estimate, need about five years to reach comparable scale.
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