Berkshire Grey develops AI based robotic systems to facilitate in e-commerce shipping.
- Amazon controls about 50% of total US e-commerce.
- Of the rest, 95% of shipping, handling and packaging are currently done manually.
- Berkshire Grey is offering US merchants the same (or similar) technology that Amazon has, but those individual merchants can't afford to develop on their own.
- Berkshire Grey will "Take over" the Merchants warehouse and automate it.
- Berkshire Grey will charge a setup fee and per transaction cost.
- This concept makes a lot of sense to me. In order to compete, merchants need to automate. In order to automate on the level that Amazon.com has achieved, the rest of the merchants are, in a sense, pooling resources to compete, and Berkshire Grey is the pooling agent.
- Founder and CEO is Tom Wagner, former CTO of iRobot, maker of the Rumba who started the company in 2013.
- The company claims that using their tech, merchants will achieve a 90% reduction in unload time. Up to 3 times increased warehouse capacity. 70% reduction in overhead costs and up to 35% reduction in square foot floor space.
- Investors in Berkshire Grey include: Khosla Ventures, Softbank, Canaan Partners, New Enterprise associates and AOL founder Steve Case,
- Customers include Wallmart, Target, FedEx and TJ Maxx!
- This is a 5-10 year play which I'm very bullish on. With initial customers like these, there are many reasons for optimism.
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