Formic, which supplies factory robots for a flat monthly fee, has raised $50 million in growth capital. The round includes a Series B led by Mercato Partners, with participation from Light Ray Ventures, Lightscape Partners, Citi and other investors. S2G Investments provided debt financing. Formic says the money will take it from task-specific automation into general-purpose robotics on a single platform.
The company's Robot-as-a-Service model bundles equipment, deployment software, field operations, maintenance, financing and performance monitoring into one recurring payment, with no upfront capital from the customer. For manufacturing engineers weighing automation, that moves the cost from a capital purchase to a monthly fee, with Formic responsible for keeping the robots productive.
Formic says it runs hundreds of robots across more than 100 facilities in over 30 states, and has logged more than 750,000 hours of live production. Its fleet runs at 99.6 percent uptime, and 97 percent of customers renew. Formic also says it now deploys robots about three times faster than it did a year ago. Applications include palletizing, case packing, machine tending, kitting and assist work in food and beverage, consumer packaged goods, chemicals, aerospace, defense and packaging.
The general-purpose push draws on data from that fleet. Each deployed robot generates records on tasks, operating conditions, performance and corrective actions, which Formic plans to use to train the next generation of robotic systems. Formic is also working with Physical Intelligence, combining the startup's robotic foundation models with Formic's production data to adapt them for manufacturing. Physical Intelligence highlighted that work in its Pi API beta announcement.
"Building a capable robot and making it productive in a real factory are two very different challenges," said Saman Farid, founder and CEO of Formic. Ryan Sanders, Managing Director at Mercato Partners, joins Formic's board. He said Formic has built the deployment, servicing and financing pieces, and that "its customers stay and add robots."
The funding will also support expansion into metal fabrication and deeper work in aerospace, space, defense, medical and energy. Formic assembles and tests its robots at a new facility in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and develops new capabilities at an R&D center in Oakland, California.
