Warehouse robot leasing startup Ultra raises $62M across seed and Series A

The total is a $50M Series A led by Framework Ventures, with Y Combinator participating, plus an earlier $12M seed led by Y Combinator and Next View. Brooklyn-based Ultra builds packing robots for third-party logistics warehouses. It says its machines have packed more than 500,000 orders. Customers pay an upfront integration fee and then a monthly fee for hardware and software support. CEO Jon Miller Schwartz says demand has let Ultra raise prices, but he did not disclose revenue. Ultra also expanded its partnership with Physical Intelligence, the $5.6B robot model company. Physical Intelligence supplies the learning software while Ultra builds and installs the machines. Exotec and Amazon's own fleet are among the other players in warehouse automation. The deal points to a workable split in robotics. Hardware firms own deployment and customers and rent robots as a service, while licensing the intelligence from a model lab. Customers avoid a large upfront purchase, and the model provider gets real-world training data in return.