Sunrise Robotics, a startup building modular industrial robotics and AI models that makes them simple to deploy in different environments, has emerged from stealth with $8.5 million in seed funding.
The investment round is being led by Plural, a London-based early stage venture capital firm formed by a group of prominent startup founders including Wise cofounder Taavet Hinrikus and SongKick cofounder Ian Hogarth. Venture capital firms Tapestry, Seedcamp, Tiny.vc and Prototype Capital also participated in the funding.
Sunrise, which is headquartered in Ljubljana, Slovenia, declined to comment on its valuation following the funding round.
The startup is trying to address an acute and worsening labor shortage in many European manufacturing firms, Tomaz Stolfa, its cofounder and CEO, said. These businesses currently represent 15% of Europe’s GDP and employ 32 million people. But close to a third of this existing European manufacturing workforce is set to retire in the coming decade and industrial companies are already saying they cannot find enough young workers to replace those who are leaving. Sunrise sees industrial robots being able to take over some of the manual cutting, welding, fastening, and bolting human workers currently perform on the production lines of these businesses.
