Gather AI, a Pittsburgh-based maker of computer vision and AI-powered warehouse inventory monitoring offerings, recently announced a $17M Series A-1 led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Tribeca Venture Partners, Dundee Venture Capital, Expa and Bling Capital.
The new funding provides a total of $34M raised to date and will be invested in scaling operations as Gather AI looks to further attract customers with its products.
AI-software powered autonomous drones
Today, companies combat low accuracy with cycle counting via barcode scanning. Still, these counts only partially represent inventory, and capacity constraints make it difficult for workers to survey the full warehouse. On average, inaccurate inventory can cost a business hundreds of thousands per year per warehouse and significant revenue loss in missed orders.
Gather AI automates inventory visibility challenges through autonomous drones across third-party logistics, manufacturing and retail facilities, with much richer data than warehouses can currently obtain with barcodes, according to the company. Customers include NFI, GEODIS, DSV, Barrett Distribution and DPI Specialty Foods (KeHE).
“Gather AI’s cutting-edge computer vision and workflow software, purpose-built for inventory monitoring, has seen significant commercial adoption and rapid growth separating them from the field of other venture-backed startups,” said Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures. “We are excited to welcome Gather AI to our portfolio of companies such as Kiva, ShipBob, FourKites and Vention that are leveraging AI and software in the physical world.”
The company says its AI software enables drones to fly autonomously through warehouses, scanning 15 times faster than traditional means. Additional AI infers bar codes, text, empty locations and other inventory-related information in the images, automatically comparing them with what’s in the warehouse management system (WMS). The warehouse manager can then view inventory data in real time from a web dashboard. According to Gather AI, its customers are seeing an ROI of 3-5x, driven by a 66% reduction in warehouse inventory database errors.
“We’re already seeing the positive impact of Gather AI on customers spanning third-party logistics, retail, food and beverage, and manufacturing,” said Sankalp Arora, co-founder and CEO of Gather AI. “AI-powered cameras will transform supply-chain traceability to have a similar impact that barcodes did in the 1980s, and our technology is at the forefront of this transformation.”
Gather AI was founded in 2017 by co-founders Arora, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey, after launching from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.
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