Creative Office Pavilion (“COP”), a leading Herman Miller dealer based in Boston and New York City and Office Resources (“OR”), a leading Knoll dealer also based in Boston and New York City announced their merger January 24th, 2022.

COP and OR have a combined 60+ years of experience representing Herman Miller and Knoll and will now be operating as one company – Creative Office Resources (COR). The management teams of both companies will remain in place, including Denise Horn (CEO), Paul Fraser (COO) and Kevin Barbary (CMO).“This merger provides us the opportunity to offer even more support and innovation to our clients,” said Horn. “While COR aspires to be the largest Herman Miller and Knoll dealer in the country, our primary goal is to be the best dealer by staying focused on providing customers with excellent products and services. COP and OR have always admired and respected each other and this combination allows us to be even better together.”

“With 25 successful years under our belt and having the experience to navigate the ever-changing industry landscape, it was clear to us that when Herman Miller and Knoll merged that COP and OR should do the same,” said Barbary. “COP and OR truly complement each other as we share core values, have exceptional focus on clients and strong manufacturer relationships,” said Fraser.

“We are thrilled that our long-standing partners, COP and OR, are bringing their dynamic, talented teams together to serve customers across the Northeast,” said John Michael, President of the Americas, MillerKnoll. “This exciting merger creates an even stronger industry leader and we look forward to a bright future partnering with the new Creative Office Resources.”

Creative Office Resources combined workforce exceeds 440 employees, has 12 locations, 2 warehouses with offices in 8 states (CT, MA, ME,NH, NJ, NY, RI, and VT). Creative Office Resources is confident that their people, market coverage, and exceptional service will underscore COR as the preferred choice for workplace furnishings.

About Creative Office Pavilion
Since 1986, Creative Office Pavilion has created spaces for clients in a broad cross section of industries and functional areas. Through extraordinary ideas, leading-edge products, and smart solutions COP helps inspire innovation in the work environment. COP has been a top Herman Miller distributor in the Northeast year over year by continually supporting the needs of customers and the design community. The COP culture embraces working hard, doing the right thing, and leading with enthusiasm. It is the passion of the team that has fueled COP’s continuous growth and expansion. Learn more at www.creativeofficepavilion.com

About Office Resources
Office Resources is a full-service furniture dealer with over 25 years of success. OR’s mission is to create long-lasting partnerships by listening, advising, collaborating, and excelling in all that they do. Their commitment to continuous improvement, training, technology and workplace trends has made them a trusted and valued resource for their clients and industry partners. OR has the breadth of choice, depth of expertise, innovative research and flawless customer focused execution that has made them one of the top Knoll distributors in the world. Learn more at www.ori.com.

More robots that can pick up separate objects are moving from laboratories to warehouses as the technology improves and labor-strapped logistics operators look to automation to meet surging demand.

Businesses are using software-powered robotic arms to sort clothing and e-commerce parcels, pack bread and industrial supplies and, in some cases, pick electronics and consumer products from larger bins to prepare orders for delivery.

Experts say the technology isn’t replacing human workers anytime soon. But the latest steps show warehouse robots are evolving as the computer vision and software that guide them grow more sophisticated, allowing them to take on more tasks that have been largely done by people.

Puma North America Inc., a division of Puma SE, is using several robotic arms to assemble orders of clothing and shoes at a distribution center in Torrance, Calif.; the company plans to install more robots at another site outside Indianapolis. The technology from Nimble Robotics Inc., whose customers include Best Buy Co. and Victoria’s Secret & Co., uses a combination of cameras, grippers and artificial intelligence to pluck items from bins that another automated system delivers to workstations usually staffed by people. Remote operators are on hand to assist if the robot has trouble picking up an object.

Top news and in-depth analysis on the world of logistics, from supply chain to transport and technology.

The robots perform with about 99% accuracy, about as well as their human counterparts, and can run for two shifts straight, said Helmut Leibbrandt, Puma’s senior vice president of supply-chain management for the Americas.

“I believe automation is the future,” Mr. Leibbrandt said. “That doesn’t mean we reduce manpower … It’s pretty much a labor shortage which we face.”

Interest in robotic picking is up considerably in the pandemic as e-commerce orders have surged and competition for workers intensified, accelerating broader demand for logistics automation.

Robotic picking technology “is a niche today in the overall warehouse automation market, but it’s growing rapidly,” said Ash Sharma, managing director of market-research firm Interact Analysis. That sliver of the market will reach $1.34 billion in 2025 from an estimated $137 million last year, the firm projects. The broader warehouse automation market was nearly $36 billion last year, Interact Analysis estimates.

Last year SB Logistics Corp. and SoftBank Robotics Corp., subsidiaries of Japan-based conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. , opened a highly automated fulfillment center in Ichikawa, Japan. The center uses robotics technology from SoftBank-backed provider Berkshire Grey Inc. to pick and pack items including electronics, household products and canned goods. The facility stores about 50,000 products, with robots doing about half the picking, and aims to eventually automate all operations, said Steve Johnson, Berkshire Grey’s president and chief operating officer.

Some businesses are deploying high-tech mechanical arms for other distribution work. Bimbo Bakeries USA, a division of Mexico’s Grupo Bimbo SAB, uses robotic grasping technology from startup Dexterity Inc. to pick and pack bread in some locations.

Greenwich, Conn.-based GXO Logistics Inc. is using a robotic arm equipped with camera vision to help speed up the order fulfillment process at a warehouse in the Netherlands.

The system, developed by Austrian logistics-automation company Knapp AG and AI startup Covariant for a GXO apparel customer, places manually picked items in an overhead sorting system that can store items in holding areas to ensure that items in an order that are picked at different times get to the human packer at the same time.

The company also uses mobile robots that don’t pick up objects to help workers navigate aisles to locate items.

“The development opportunity is to be able to link the three things together”—the picking arm, the AI-enabled ability to identify and grasp objects, and mobility, said Phil Shaw, operations director for GXO Logistics Europe. “To move that down the aisles, that’s the future.”

Developers are still working out the kinks. Machines excel at repetitive tasks in fixed environments, but teaching them to handle different kinds of objects in warehouses has been a challenge.

One shortcut to help machines learn faster is a strategy used by Nimble and providers including San Antonio, Tex.-based Plus One Robotics Inc. in which humans keep tabs on the machines and take over if a robot fumbles.

“It’s possible we never get to 100% automation,” said Julian Counihan, general partner at Schematic Ventures, which he said invested in Plus One in 2017 because of the remote-monitoring approach.

Right now, using robots to pick orders makes most financial sense in 24/7 operations with a limited number of products, said Hasan Dandashly, chief executive of Atlanta-based Dematic Corp., a subsidiary of KION Group AG that is one of largest providers of logistics and manufacturing automation.

“The pace of adoption is still evolving,” Mr. Dandashly said. “I don’t think we are on the verge of not having human pickers anytime soon.”

NEW YORK and ATHENS, January 25, 2022 – J.P. Morgan (NYSE: JPM) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Viva Wallet Holdings Software Development S.A. (Viva Wallet), a leading European cloud-based payments fintech company, and its existing shareholders to acquire an ownership stake of approximately 49%, subject to regulatory approvals. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Founded in 2000, Viva Wallet is headquartered in Athens, Greece, and focuses on serving SMBs in 23 countries. The company built a proprietary, cloud-based payments platform that is able to offer a broad array of value-added services to merchants including tap to device technology, merchant cash advance, bill pay, expense management, virtual debit card issuance, cash disbursement, gift cards and loyalty.

“Viva Wallet’s mission is to change the way businesses pay and get paid in Europe with cutting edge technology, unprecedented agility and in-depth knowledge of the European payments landscape,” said Haris Karonis, CEO & co-founder of Viva Wallet. “This strategic investment from J.P. Morgan’s Payments business will enable us to complete the build out of our vision to deliver fully localized payments and transactions services to SMBs across Europe.”

J.P. Morgan’s Payments business is focused on growing its omnichannel merchant acquiring capabilities offered to European SMBs. The strategic investment in Viva Wallet is a natural fit for J.P. Morgan’s Payments business – which combines corporate treasury services, trade finance, card and merchant services capabilities – to deliver an integrated payments experience to clients across the economy. The business recently unveiled its brand for SMB payments, Chase Payment Solutions, in the US and the strategic investment in Viva Wallet sets the stage to develop future international products and services across European SMBs.

“J.P. Morgan’s strategic investment in Viva Wallet signifies our confidence in their technology and team who already offer a holistic omnichannel merchant acquiring capability across Europe and better serve SMBs,” said Max Neukirchen, Global Head of Payments & Commerce Solutions, J.P. Morgan.J.P. Morgan’s strategic investment in Viva Wallet signifies our confidence in their technology and team who already offer a holistic omnichannel merchant acquiring capability across Europe and better serve SMBs.

Max Neukirchen, Global Head of Payments & Commerce Solutions, J.P. Morgan

The strategic investment in Viva Wallet is further evidence of J.P. Morgan’s Payments business’ commitment to better serving global and European clients and comes on the heels of the firm’s recent announcement to enter into a strategic partnership with Volkswagen Financial Services AG, with plans to acquire a controlling interest of close to 75% in the car manufacturer’s payments platform, subject to regulatory approvals.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as exclusive financial advisor to J.P. Morgan and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP and Karatzas & Partners served as legal advisors. Jefferies served as exclusive financial advisor to Viva Wallet and Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP served as legal advisor.

About JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading financial services firm based in the United States of America (“U.S.”), with operations worldwide. JPMorgan Chase had $3.7 trillion in assets and $294.1 billion in stockholders’ equity as of December 31, 2021. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management. Under the J.P. Morgan and Chase brands, the Firm serves millions of customers in the U.S. and many of the world’s most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients globally. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com

About Viva Wallet

Viva Wallet is the first European entirely cloud-based Neobank with offices in 23 European Countries. Created to change the way businesses pay and get paid, Viva Wallet offers businesses of all sizes acceptance of offline and online payments through innovative solutions, such as Tap To device app that turns any mobile into a card terminal and the Smart Checkout solution, an adaptive checkout page.

Additionally, Viva Wallet offers business accounts with local IBAN and virtual debit card issuing. Information about Viva Wallet is available at www.vivawallet.com

Velocity Truck Centers (VTC) is pleased to announce that the company has expanded further into the Southeast with the acquisition of Triple-T Truck Centers. These acquisitions extend VTC’s reach in the Southeast along the I-40 in North Carlina to Warsaw, Rocky Point and Wilmington, and into South Carolina including Florence and Charleston. The acquisition also includes the Aftermarket Parts company located in New Bern, North Carolina which provides wholesale replacement parts to the forestry and construction industries nationally and worldwide.

VTC now consists of 62 locations across North America, including 11 body shops, and offering coast-to-coast coverage of commercial vehicle sales, service, parts, collision and fabrication services as well as equipment financing. VTC will bring its unparalleled customer focus, including two-hour Express Assessment, Elite Support Certification and equipment financing through its Crossroads Equipment Lease and Finance division, to Triple-T’s markets in the Carolinas.

From Brad Fauvre and Conan Barker, Co-Presidents of VTC, “We are very excited to extend our reach in the Carolinas with the addition of the Triple-T locations which have an exceptionally dedicated employee base that we look forward to working with as part of the Velocity team. We want to thank Tim Matt for choosing VTC to carry on his legacy and continue to provide the best service possible for his customers across North and South Carolina.”

From Tim Matt, owner of Triple-T, “I am pleased to have chosen Velocity Truck Centers to carry on the legacy of the Triple-T companies and Aftermarket Parts which began with my family in 1967. It was extremely important to me that Velocity committed to continue the stewardship of my senior management, employees and customers with the same care, ethics and attention as the Matt family has shown for the last 54 years. The transaction has gone exactly as discussed when we shook hands, and I wish Velocity the best of success with their next chapter in the Carolinas and throughout the global markets served by Aftermarket Parts.”

Velocity Truck Centers, a part of the Velocity Vehicle Group (VVG), operates 54 commercial vehicle dealership locations in the US across California, Arizona, Nevada, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama and Hawaii. VVG also operates 16 Daimler dealerships across Australia, as well as 8 locations in Baja, Mexico. VTC provides new & used commercial vehicle sales, including the full spectrum from pickup trucks to delivery vans to 18-wheelers and school busses, as well as aftermarket parts and service support, along with a multitude of other vehicle-related services. VTC is an authorized dealer for the Freightliner, Western Star, Autocar, Ford, Fuso, Thomas Built Buses, Sprinter, Isuzu, Hino Trucks, SportTruck, Renegade RV, Rosenbauer fire, Crane Carrier, Great Dane Trailers and Freightliner Custom Chassis vehicle brands. VVG also offers equipment financing through its Crossroads Equipment Lease and Finance subsidiary, as well as small business and SBA loans through Velocity SBA and truck rental and leasing through Velocity Truck Rental and Leasing.

NEW YORK, Dec. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — As K-12 schools and districts grapple with the effects of two years of disrupted teaching and learning, a 14-month grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will help Littera Education close gaps in mathematics achievement among students set back by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Littera Education, founded last year expressly to address inequities in public education, will use the grant to refine the Littera Academic Support Platform, which provides technology for districts to design, deliver and evaluate tutoring programs tailored to their students’ needs.

Littera Education receives Gates Foundation Grant to design, deliver and evaluate custom tutoring programs for schools.Tweet this

Research by McKinsey & Company, published at the end of the 2020-21 school year, estimated that students entered the current school year more than five months behind in their learning. 

“We are living in a time of intense student need and a high watermark of funding, leading to extraordinary levels of tutoring being delivered around the country. With this grant, Littera is looking to extend our academic support platform to better understand the benefit students gain from high-quality tutoring compared to the cost,” said Justin Serrano, CEO and co-founder of Littera. “This understanding will enable districts to design more-efficient tutoring programs that will remain financially sustainable after stimulus-level funding ends.”

The availability of federal pandemic-related stimulus funding presents a time-limited opportunity: Districts can use those funds to develop proven, cost-efficient academic support programs that can be sustained for at-risk students long after funding levels return to normal.

Littera’s Academic Support Platform leverages district assessment data to identify students who need tutoring and to support a variety of program models and content. It automates scheduling and other logistics and can include live, online and in-person tutoring. As tutoring progresses, it captures student and tutor feedback, attendance and dosage data, and connects the dots for schools and teachers to have visibility into tutoring programs executed on the platform.

The resulting system should efficiently use assessment and curriculum to keep tutoring tightly aligned to the district’s standards and student needs. The vision is that, in the future, districts and researchers could easily run cost-benefit analyses for tutoring program variables, such as tutor profile, student-to-tutor ratio, curriculum and frequency of services delivered.

The project kicks off this month and will continue through the current school year. Starting in fall 2022, participating districts will begin their own data-driven experiments. The research findings of this work will be published and made available to any school district.

To learn more, please visit www.litteraeducation.com.

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Fenway Sports Group (FSG), a global sports, marketing, media, entertainment, and real estate company, today announced that FSG has entered into an agreement to acquire controlling interest in the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team. The deal, which is subject to approval by the National Hockey League (NHL) Board of Governors, is expected to close before the end of the year.

As part of the transaction, Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle will remain part of the ownership group and will be closely aligned with FSG. Lemieux, a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, will continue his role guiding hockey operations for the organization. In addition, continuity of leadership will be maintained among the club’s senior management team of CEO David Morehouse, COO Kevin Acklin, President of Hockey Operations Brian Burke, General Manager Ron Hextall, and Head Coach Mike Sullivan.

FSG Chairman Tom Werner said, “The Pittsburgh Penguins are a premier National Hockey League franchise with a very strong organization, a terrific history and a vibrant, passionate fan base. We will work diligently to continue building on the remarkable Penguins’ tradition of championships and exciting play.

“We are particularly excited to welcome Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle to FSG and have the utmost respect for all they have done to build the Penguins into the perennially successful franchise we know today. We look forward to working with Mario, Ron and the entire Penguins front office team.”

Lemieux and Burkle, who purchased the team in 1999, enjoyed a 22-year partnership that delivered three Stanley Cups and the construction of PPG Paints Arena, a multi-purpose venue which opened in August 2010 and is considered one of the top facilities in North America. Under their leadership, the Penguins have consistently led the NHL in local TV ratings, social media, sponsorships, and community and youth hockey investments, while selling out more than 600 straight games.

“As the Penguins enter a new chapter, I will continue to be as active and engaged with the team as I always have been and look forward to continuing to build on our success with our incoming partners at FSG,” Lemieux said. “They have an organizational philosophy that mirrors the approach that worked so well for Ron and me over the past 22 years.”

“Mario and I came in together, and we are excited to become a part of the new ownership group,” Burkle said. “The Pittsburgh Penguins will be in good hands with FSG, and Mario and I are here to support them, committed as much as we’ve always been to the success of the franchise.”

“Fenway Sports Group brings everything we could ask for in an ownership partner to help continue the historic success of the Pittsburgh Penguins,” said Morehouse. “They understand what the Penguins mean to Pittsburgh, and they bring to us the latest in cutting-edge sports research, data analytics, player training and performance, real estate development, and organizational excellence. This combination is a truly exciting partnership that positions our club at the forefront of the future of professional sports and allows us to build upon what Ron and Mario created.”

Bank of America served as financial advisor to FSG, and Citi served as financial advisor to the Penguins on the transaction. Shearman & Sterling served as legal advisor to FSG, while Reed Smith served as legal advisor to the Penguins.

Travel and tourism are slowly starting to move again in the wake of COVID-19 crashing over the world and sending us to shelter in place. Today a company focused on experiences — museum visits, skydiving, local cooking classes and more — is announcing a round of growth funding on the back of seeing its own business bounce back. Peek, which provides a marketplace for consumers to discover and book experiences, a platform for businesses to book team building and other internal events and tech for tourism companies to digitize, manage and run their own experience businesses online — “like a Shopify for experiences,” CEO and co-founder Ruzwana Bashir said — has raised $80 million. It plans to use the funds to continue expanding its product, hiring more talent and taking Peek to more places, after passing some $2 billion in bookings from some 35 million customers, mostly in North America.

The round, a Series C, is notable in part because of who is behind it: The funding is being led by WestCap — the investment firm founded by another major player in the business of travel, the former CFO of Airbnb, Laurence Tosi. New investor Goldman Sachs Asset Management is also in the round, along with 3L, Cathay Innovation, I2BF Global Ventures, Manta Ray and Apeiron. Other high-profile past backers include Jack Dorsey, Eric Schmidt and Kayak founder Paul English.

San Francisco-based Peek is not disclosing its valuation, but Bashir told us the figure “has increased substantially because we grew the business a lot and hit profitability this year.” Peek has now raised more than $100 million in the last 10 years.

“Now that we are starting to invest again, we are going into investment mode,” she added. It is worth pointing out, too, that this round was originally pitched to me as a $60 million investment, and then it grew by $20 million just days ago, which speaks also to the confidence investors currently have in the travel and tourism space.

That’s a big shift from a year ago, when travel-related companies were regrouping and trying to figure out how to continue weathering what had turned out to be a very long storm. Many of them had gone into the summer of 2020 hopeful that the pandemic (which really kicked off earlier in the year) would have subsided and led to a wave of exuberant movement in the warmer months, only to find any bounce short-lived. One of the more well-capitalized of the travel experience startups — Berlin’s GetYourGuide, valued at over $1 billion just six months before COVID-19 started appearing — found itself raising first a big convertible note, and then a big credit facility, as it shored up its business as the pandemic wore on.

Peek was also not immune. When COVID-19 hit, “it was pretty terrifying for us. We were growing great and then, all of the sudden, bookings crashed,” Bashir, who co-founded the company with Oskar Bruening said. “We then did all the hard things.” That included Peek laying off 30% of its staff to help it get through the slump.

Peek also took to the offensive, thinking of how it could work differently with its customers on both sides of the business. With end users, it doubled down on virtual experiences (for example, online cooking classes); and rethinking and expanding who “customers” could be by building out experiences booking for corporate and internal events.https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.1.0/safeframe.html

But the real key sounds like how it rethought that it worked with experience providers, where it helped them get their own emergency loans, and it equipped them with the tools to work within the “new normal” by helping them shift to focusing more on local activities for local people rather than tourists; and providing them with more software and functionality to run those businesses.

“We are the operating system for those merchants,” Bashir said.

It turned out to be the right move: it meant that as those businesses picked up in activity, so did Peek, which found itself turning profitable in the midst of the pandemic. Software currently accounts for “the majority” of Peek’s business, she said, although that could well change over the next year as consumer travel starts to rebound and that brings more activity to Peek’s own marketplace.

“There is a lot of opportunity, $1 trillion in gross merchandise value, and still a lot of businesses haven’t made the leap online,” Bruening said. Many of the experiences customers were previously using pen, paper, phone calls, and managing through spreadsheets, Bashir said, “but [now] you can’t connect with customers now before you connect.”https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.1.0/safeframe.html

Activities that Peek covers range from wine tours and watersports to skydiving and art classes, while Peek Pro, as the B2B2C product is called, offers tech to enable online booking, point-of-sale services and “hundreds” of automations covering things like inventory management, dynamic pricing, waivers and marketing analytics. Peek says that it has “thousands” of customers, including businesses like the Museum of Ice Cream, Color Factory, Artechouse (the experiential art venues) and Pennekamp State Park.

Some of those businesses, without a doubt, target younger adults and thus were already pretty digitally savvy to begin with, but more generally Bashir believes that Peek’s success in building B2B2C tech for experiences companies is part of the bigger trend in the world of business software specifically for offline businesses.

“People underestimate what happened in offline. There was a leap forward in e-commerce,” she said of the story that’s often told about the impact COVID-19 had on businesses that were already online. But offline businesses were faced with needing to suddenly make what she calls “a 10-year leap” to catch up. Peek is part of the battalion of tech companies that have rushed to fill that void for various other use cases, such as building software for restaurants, or building logistics or curbside pickup for brick-and-mortar retailers.

“We have been early adopters and investors in travel technology companies, and have been following Peek.com for years,” said Tosi of WestCap, in a statement. “Ruzwana Bashir is a dynamic leader and Peek.com’s unique approach has allowed them to serve millions of people. This is a transformative solution that will allow a wider audience of travelers and locals to have meaningful experiences, and for activity operators to grow their businesses.”

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nimble Robotics, Inc., a robotics and e-commerce fulfillment technology company, today shared for the first time a view of its robots picking and packing hundreds of thousands of customer orders in production each day. Nimble is working with many of the world’s largest and most well-known brands including Best Buy, Victoria’s Secret, Puma, NFI/CalCartage, iHerb, Adore Me, Weee! and others. Nimble robots are picking in warehouses developed by the leading solutions integrators like AutoStore, Opex, Bastian, Swisslog, TGW and Kuecker Pulse Integration (KPI).

Nimble has deployed fleets of robots in production within warehouse environments across the United States this year with existing and new contracts that can grow the fleet with over 200 more robots in 2022. The Nimble robots have picked more than 15 million objects, across 500,000 unique products ranging from eye-liners, belts, body wash and loofahs to keyboards, mice, USB sticks and game-consoles to lingerie, hoodies, and footwear – everything from daily essentials to holiday gift favorites.

Over the past few years two challenges have stifled the adoption of pick and pack robots: robot reliability and technology integration challenges. ECommerce fulfillment centers hold millions of different products. Each of those products are different sizes, shapes, weights, textures, stiffnesses and fragility. Having robots that can reliably handle all of this variability has been considered by many to be impossible. Additionally, integration of technology into warehouse ecosystems is a notoriously painful process. Integration efforts frequently take up to a year, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require thousands of software changes to the warehouse management system (WMS). Nimble’s product offering uniquely solves these two critical challenges.

“Our robots use a variety of different grippers and supervised autonomy to reliably handle nearly any object or product that fits into a bin. Our AI learns what grippers work best on different objects and automatically switches its gripper to properly pick, pack and handle each object. Our technology has been proven to be reliable to 99.9% accuracy in production, but what’s often the most impressive and exciting product feature, in the eyes of our customers, is the way in which we seamlessly integrate our robots. It’s very fast and easy. Our AI-based integration requires no changes to the warehouse software whatsoever. It also costs nothing to implement. The AI interprets the already existing human operator interfaces to determine what items to pick and where to pack them. A full production integration can all be done in one day using Nimble’s AI Integration tool. When I say ‘one day, $0, zero code changes,’ it sounds too good to be true, but our customers will vouch for us,” said Simon Kalouche, Nimble’s founder and CEO. “This has been a significant competitive advantage allowing us to quickly scale. To my knowledge, we’ve now deployed the world’s largest fleet of eCommerce ASRS picking robots. More robots deployed means more proprietary data being collected. Just like with self-driving cars, more data means higher capability and reliability which further drives customer retention and happiness.”

“With logistics and fulfillment experience at Amazon, iHerb and other retail companies, I’ve worked with a lot of technology teams and the Nimble team is the most impressive robotics team I’ve ever worked with,” said Jonathan Styles, director of continuous improvement-lean at iHerb. “They are bringing to market bleeding-edge technology and solving extremely hard problems in a market that is struggling to find labor. We have over 20 Nimble robots today and plan to add more as we grow our fulfillment capabilities.”

“There are a dozen or so robotics companies that claim to have a robotic picking solution. Nimble is the only one I’ve seen that has proven, scaled deployments in real warehouses performing real production picking,” said Helmut Leibbrandt, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Management & Logistics – Americas. “They developed a solution that integrated seamlessly within our existing physical and WMS/WCS structure.”

“We haven’t done any marketing and surprisingly we don’t have any dedicated sales reps, yet we’ve deployed a large number of robots. I think this is a testament to the high demand for what we’re building and to our product and how well it works. We let the robots speak for, and sell, themselves. To date, we have 100% customer retention and 100% repeat customers,” said Kalouche. “ECommerce continues to grow rapidly but the available warehouse labor force is actually declining. These opposing trends are creating historic labor shortages and a growing labor supply void. Our robots are being used to augment the human workforce to help fill that void.”

“Nimble partnered with us last year during the COVID outbreak to help us safely fulfill orders in our warehouse. Together we became the first eCommerce fulfillment center in the world with fully robotic picking. The robots now handle our 25,000+ SKUs and can pick over 30,000 units per day,” said Gary Bravard, co-founder and chief business officer of Adore Me.

Since raising a $50 million investment in March earlier this year, Nimble has increased its team from 25 to 75 employees and quickly expanded its customer base. Its robots are deployed in warehouses across the country and will be playing a big role in helping fulfill millions of orders for the 2021 holiday season.

ABOUT NIMBLE
Nimble builds AI-powered robots that pick, pack and fulfill online orders to enable the fastest, most affordable and most sustainable on-demand eCommerce fulfillment. Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, the company is backed by investors including: Accel, DNS Capital, GSR Ventures and Reinvent Capital with notable individual board members including Fei-Fei Li, and Sebastian Thrun. More information is available at: http://nimble.ai/

Media:
Kerry Walker
Kerry@walkercomms.com

Dutchie, a four-year-old, Bend, Oregon company that charges cannabis dispensaries a monthly fee to create and run their websites and manage orders, is on a roll this year, raising its second large round of funding — this time a $350 million Series D at a $3.75 billion valuation.

The new valuation is more than double what was announced in March when Dutchie brought in $200 million in Series C funding at a $1.7 billion valuation. At the time, the valuation was roughly eight times the $200 million valuation the company had after closing on $35 million in Series B funding last August.

The latest funding round is led by D1 Capital Partners, with participation from existing investors, including Tiger Global, Dragoneer, DFJ Growth, Thrive Capital, Gron Ventures and Casa Verde Capital. New investors include Willoughby Capital, Glynn Capital and Park West Asset Management. The latest funding round boosts the company’s total funding to over $600 million.https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.1.0/safeframe.html

Dutchie co-founder and CEO Ross Lipson spoke to me yesterday about the company’s serious tailwinds, driven by the societal shift of wider adoption of cannabis products, health and wellness benefits and more states passing friendlier regulations.

“The verdict is out, and cannabis is a force for good. That is the biggest development we are excited about,” Lipson told TechCrunch. “The cannabis space is the fastest growing industry, up 35% year over year. Dutchie is working with over 5,000 dispensaries in North America and processed $14 billion in annualized sales for those dispensaries. We’ve seen 100% year over year growth with dispensaries.”

Indeed, Dutchie is continuously working to propel the industry forward with continuous education on the benefits of cannabis and backing more legalizations and regulatory work. Cannabis is seeing more startups bringing technology into the fold, attracting talent and investment. In April, Crunchbase reported that $357 million was invested into cannabis companies so far in 2021, while forecasters say cannabis will be a $100 billion industry in the U.S. by 2030.

Earlier this year, TechCrunch spoke to cannabis venture capital investors. Morgan Paxhia, managing director of Poseidon Investment Management, said that “2021 could be nothing short of amazing for our industry. We expect capital flows to pick up massively from pent-up demand, good public markets bringing more IPOs, lots of M&A and new innovative startups coming on scene.”https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.1.0/safeframe.html

Meanwhile, Lipson said Dutchie had a long relationship with D1 Capital, and along with existing investors, kept in constant communication about the business and its customers. To keep up with demand, both Dutchie and D1 decided it was the right time for an investment to accelerate the mission to streamline dispensary operations.

Dutchie has already made a $100 million commitment to invest in R&D over the next 12 months, so that is where some of the new funding will be deployed, Lipson said. He is also adding to the company’s employee base of 500 people across 40 states and Canada.

Now that the company has entered Series D territory, I asked Lipson if an IPO was part of the company’s future goals, and he said “we are always looking at all opportunities.”

As for the future of the cannabis industry, he said we will continue to see adoption across all areas, especially as more people are educated on finding the right product and modality and more states legalize cannabis.https://jac.yahoosandbox.com/1.1.0/safeframe.html

“There are more initiatives, like the Safe Banking Act to help banks provide services for cannabis-related businesses and the More Act,” he added. “We don’t see federal legalization in the near term, but are optimistic that it will come.”