JAKA with 150 million financing

Founded in 2014, Chinese cobot manufacturer JAKA recently closed its D round of funding. This makes it the cobot startup with the most funding rounds. Now CYN 1 billion, the equivalent of about US$ 150 million, is flowing in. In total, JAKA has thus raised US$ 175 million.

Renowned investors

The latest round of funding involves Temasek, True Light, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Prosperity7 Ventures. Softbank Vision Fund 2 already holds shares in Agile Robots and is "affiliated" with United Robotics Group. Independent of Agile Robots, the fund had recently had to take large write-downs as a result of the declining valuation of tech stocks. In this respect, the renewed investment in these fragile times is a clear statement in favor of robotics (China is not suffering from an energy crisis, but from Corona and poor economic data).

JAKA is unlikely to have a USP

If I see it correctly, JAKA has a large product range, but technologically no USP. The role model clearly seems to be Universal Robots. A camera can be purchased as an option, so that a comparison with the previous Techman models is also possible. An interest in household or care robots could not be detected so far. German robot manufacturers such as Neura Robotics, the United Robotics Group and Franka Emika see great potential here.

JAKA view is different

Contrary to my USP statements, an excerpt from the official press release is correct: " As a leader in the new generation of cobots, JAKA Robotics has formed 9 core technologies and 6 core algorithms, creating highly flexible intelligent solutions for industrial manufacturing that can be used in a wide range of scenarios," said Mr. Li Mingyang, CEO of JAKA Robotics. "Our cobots have extensive communication interfaces and are equipped with vision systems, force sensors and other external devices. The perception equipment and robot design can be deeply integrated. It enables robots to independently carry out task planning in a complicated, unstructured environment, realizing the progress from human-machine cooperation to human-machine integration, covering more production areas."

Great expectation of investors

Unless JAKA has won over investors with an innovation or markets that are new to JAKA, they will almost inevitably have to bet on a boom in cobots. JAKA cobots cost Schweiger between 20,000 and 30,000 euros. Even if there were a profit of 5,000 euros per cobot sold (Porsche has such a percentage margin) and JAKA were currently valued at 1 billion, the company would have to sell 200,000 cobots within a few years to justify this high value. In China, around 15,000 cobots from all manufacturers are expected to have been sold in 2021 (+ 47%). However, a market dominance of JAKA there is not ascertainable. JAKA itself has sold 10,000 cobots worldwide so far, according to the company.

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The author of this blog is significantly involved in the AI/robotics project Opdra. He advises on almost all issues related to robotics incl funding/subsidies, but does not go in-depth into the technology. More about him can be found here.