17 million euros for Fruitcore Robotics

The start-up primarily targets SMEs. Now the team raises 17 million euros in its Series A financing round.

They received the prestigious EXIST-Gründerstipendium, now the Constance-based company has closed its 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, as well as to expand its services: "A robot alone cannot automate an application, it needs an intelligent linking of different 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, thereby making the entire application intuitively operable, digital, and indeed affordable," continues Riegger.

The Constance-based company's 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, packaging and sorting, or carry out pick-and-play applications. By using it, "the user saves time and money due to the easy handling and the associated flexibility of our robots," says CFO Patrick Heimburger. What's more, "economical automation is possible in quantities as low as 1, making it practical for SMEs as well."

Together with Tim Schmiedl, Manuel Frey and Tobias Kuentzle, Heimburger and Riegger founded Fruitcore Robotics, which is a spin-off of HTGW Konstanz. In 2016, they produced the first prototypes, and the company has existed since 2017. The robot models are available in three versions, which have a different range and different payloads.