Energy Robotics secures 13.5 million US dollars in Series A

The German deep tech and robotics company Energy Robotics has successfully closed a Series A financing round of 13.5 million US dollars. The company intends to use the fresh capital to further scale its AI-based platform for autonomous inspections of industrial plants and critical infrastructure.

World-leading platform for autonomous inspections

Energy Robotics is developing a hardware-independent software solution that orchestrates fleets of robots and drones for the autonomous inspection of industrial facilities. The system enables the monitoring of oil, gas, chemical and energy plants and is already being used by global industrial partners such as Shell, BP, Repsol, BASF, Merck and E.ON.

This funding round helps us to scale autonomy to the global critical infrastructure market. Our platform creates efficiency, safety and resilience - especially in times of a massive skills shortage and aging industrial assets.

Marc Dassler, CEO and co-founder of Energy Robotics

According to Energy Robotics, it has already carried out over one million inspections on five continents. This has replaced more than 32,000 hours of dangerous manual labor.

Investors Blue Bear Capital and Climate Investment lead round

The Series A round was led by Blue Bear Capital and Climate Investment (CI). Other investors include Futury Capital, Hessen Kapital, Kensho VC and TADTech. The capital will be used to drive the commercial rollout of the platform in the energy, chemical, industrial and security sectors.

Autonomous inspections as an answer to the shortage of skilled workers

The industry is facing a twofold problem worldwide: a shrinking pool of skilled labor and increasingly complex, aging equipment that requires more maintenance. Energy Robotics is addressing these challenges with its platform that uses AI-powered robotics to automate inspections and reduce operating costs by up to 40 %.

The autonomous systems perform hazardous tasks such as thermal scans, gas leak detection and visual inspections, minimizing risks to humans."The combination of an ageing workforce, declining expertise and growing infrastructure complexity creates operational risk. Our software offers a scalable solution to safely manage this change," says Dassler.

AI, LLM and evergreen digital twin

Energy Robotics' platform combines several core components into a complete software ecosystem:

• Hardware agnostic operating system: compatible with leading robots and drones (including Boston Dynamics, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, DJI).
• AI analytics: interprets sensor data from measurement displays to gas leak detection.
• LLM-based mission control: entire inspection jobs can be started by simple prompts via a voice interface.
• Evergreen Digital Twin: Each mission updates a dynamic digital image of the plant in real time, which is linked to ERP and CMMS systems.
• Data sovereignty: Customer data remains within their own IT structures, independent of third-party systems.

Energy Robotics not only delivers efficiency, but also climate protection. By detecting gas leaks at an early stage, emissions are reduced before they reach the atmosphere.

Cindi Bough, Managing Director at Climate Investment.

Energy Robotics' solution addresses key challenges in global energy and industrial infrastructure: safety, efficiency and sustainability. Energy Robotics was founded in Darmstadt and we last reported in the summer of summer 2024 about the startup's partnership with ANYbiotics.