Formic, which rents industrial robots to manufacturers, closed a $50 million Series B led by Mercato Partners, with Light Ray Ventures, Lightscape Partners, Citi and other investors taking part, plus debt from S2G Investments.
The Chicago company said the money will fund AI and robotics development, expansion from single-task factory machines into general-purpose robots that handle a wider range of jobs, and additional industrial applications such as metal fabrication across aerospace, space, defense, medical and energy markets.
Formic earns revenue through a Robot-as-a-Service model: manufacturers pay a recurring monthly fee that covers the robot, setup software, servicing, financing, field operations and performance monitoring, avoiding an upfront equipment purchase. Founded in 2020, the company has hundreds of robots in more than 100 plants across over 30 states. Its fleet has accumulated over 750,000 hours of live production, with 99.6% uptime and a 97% customer renewal rate, according to Formic. The systems handle tasks such as loading pallets, packing cases, tending machines, kitting and assisting workers.
Formic said its deployment speed has roughly tripled compared with a year ago. Its customers come from food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, chemicals, packaging, aerospace and defense, among other manufacturing industries.
The new capital is meant to move the company beyond task-specific automation into general-purpose robotics that can perform more complex manufacturing work through the same platform. Each deployment produces data on jobs, operating conditions, robot performance and fixes, which Formic said can improve later deployments and more general-purpose systems.
Formic is collaborating with Physical Intelligence, feeding its factory data and deployment experience into robotic foundation models so they work better in factories.
CEO Saman Farid said the company spent five years building "the commercialization platform that bridges that gap" and is now extending it from task-specific automation to general-purpose robotics without requiring manufacturers to build infrastructure themselves. He said that lets manufacturers "grow output and keep production here in the U.S. without betting their balance sheet on it".
Mercato Partners managing director Ryan Sanders, who joins Formic's board, said the bottleneck for smarter robots is "deploying, servicing and financing robots in real plants," and the company has built all three. S2G Investments principal Marisa Sweeney said Formic has a multi-year operating record across a large, active fleet.
Formic assembles and tests robots in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and runs an R&D center in Oakland, California.
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Nina Castell covers startups, funding rounds and acquisitions for Venturist. She writes from company announcements, filings and published reporting.