The software company Wandelbots has raised 26 million euros in new investment capital in a Series B round led by 83North and including co-investors such as Microsoft's investment fund M12 and Siemens investment fund Next47. Existing investors Paua Ventures, EQT Ventures and Atlantic Labs are also involved in the new round, as well as Haniel and Alexander Rinke (CEO Celonis). The Series A investment round was led by Paua Ventures.

Wandelbots has developed a technology platform that enables non-programmers to teach industrial robots to perform precision tasks. Customers range from large companies such as Volkswagen, BMW and Infineon to a wide range of small and medium-sized enterprises from all industries.

Wandelbots intends to use the funding to accelerate the market launch of the TracePen. TracePen is the world's first hand-sized no-code device that allows people to quickly and easily teach robots how to perform complex industrial tasks. This method is up to 70 times faster and at a fraction of the cost of traditional programming methods.

The funding is also expected to help fulfill the company's global expansion plans. Wandelbots has recently experienced a surge in demand from international buyers due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has seen industrial supply chains collapse and an increasing trend of inward outsourcing of key processes previously carried out overseas.

Christian Piechnick, founder and CEO of Wandelbots: "The complexity, time and cost of (re)programming robots to adapt to changing market requirements used to be very complex and therefore reserved for very large companies. The advent of end-user programming has turned this market on its head. Robots can now learn new skills in minutes, learning with incredible precision and accuracy through demonstration by skilled human operators." In addition, he shares his long-term vision: "Looking into the future, I am absolutely certain that in the next 15 years, robots will be as mainstream in every household as smartphones have been in the last decade. We are paving this way by enabling everyone to show a robot what to do."

"The solutions from Wandelbots offer the industry, especially automation through robotics, an enormous implementation boost," says Marco Weiß, Head of Mobility and Innovation at the Center for Future Mobility at Volkswagen. A plant operator can adapt his robotics application to changing requirements through intuitive operation without special programming knowledge and thus implement it very flexibly and cost-effectively. as