17 million euros for Fruitcore Robotics

The start-up is primarily aimed at SMEs. The team has now raised 17 million euros in its Series A financing round.

They received the prestigious EXIST start-up grant and have now completed their Series A financing round: Fruitcore Robotics has received 17 million euros from investors UVC Partners, Btov Partners and CNB Capital. Btov is participating through its Industrial Technologies Fund.

The money will be used to expand the European presence of the robotics start-up and to extend the service: "A robot alone cannot automate an application; it requires an intelligent linking of various components such as grippers, CNC systems or safety systems," explains one of the five founders, Jens Riegger. "With our software, we network these components more closely than has been common in the industry to date, making the entire application intuitive to use, digital and affordable," explains Riegger.

The Constance-based robot system with the abbreviation HORST, which stands for Highly Optimized Robotic Systems Technology, supports companies in almost all industries, according to the start-up. It can help with loading and unloading, stacking, packing and sorting or carry out pick-and-play applications. By using it, "the user saves time and money thanks to the simple handling and the associated flexibility of our robots," says CFO Patrick Heimburger. And: "Economical automation is possible from a quantity of 1 and is therefore also practicable for SMEs."

Heimburger and Riegger founded Fruitcore Robotics together with Tim Schmiedl, Manuel Frey and Tobias Kuentzle, which is a spin-off from HTGW Konstanz. They produced the first prototypes in 2016 and the company has been in existence since 2017. The robot models are available in three versions, each with a different reach and different payloads.