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The company trialling autonomous delivery robots with Just Eat has raised €16.5m

Starship Technologies, the company developing autonomous delivery robots, has just closed a €16.5m seed funding round led by German automotive giant Daimler AG.

The funding round, which also included contributions from Shasta Ventures, Matrix Partners, ZX Ventures, Grishin Robotics, Playfair Capital and other investors, will help ‘accelerate’ development and launch pilot programmes in ‘several new markets’, according to Chief Executive Ahti Heinla.

Based out of its London and Tallinn offices, Starship attracted publicity last year after announcing a high profile partnership with online takeaway giant Just Eat, which culminated in what was touted as the world’s first takeaway delivery by a self-driving robot in December.

Other partners include Hermes, Metro Group and Swiss Post, as part of pilot programmes running in the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland and Estonia.

Hardi Meybaum, General Partner at Matrix Partners, commented: “The way we move physical objects has changed dramatically thanks to Amazon and other delivery companies. Starship is enabling the trend and opening use-cases for the future that we can’t even imagine yet.

“Our investment in Starship is special because one of Matrix’s earliest investments was FedEx; Starship is bringing us full circle with the future of delivery using autonomous robots.”

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