Rapid Robotics
San Francisco startup that rented out a pretrained collaborative robot, the Rapid Machine Operator, to small and mid-sized US factories for machine-tending work on a subscription.
Rapid Robotics was a San Francisco company co-founded by chief executive Jordan Kretchmer and Ruddick Lawrence. Its product, the Rapid Machine Operator, was a collaborative robot arm sold pretrained for standard machine-operator tasks such as injection moulding, pad printing, heat stamping and pick-and-place, and the company said it could be deployed in hours without programming. It priced the robot as a subscription of $25,000 a year, which it also described as under $2,100 a month, and pitched it at smaller manufacturers that could not justify conventional automation projects. Customers it named included Westec Plastics, the medical device maker TouchMark, the component fabricator Fabri-Tech, the contract manufacturer Applied Engineering and the pharmacy company Truepill at its Hayward, California facility. The company announced three rounds within nine months. On 18 November 2020 it said it had raised $5.5 million in seed funding led by Greycroft and Bee Partners. On 6 April 2021 it announced a $12 million Series A led by NEA with Greycroft, Bee Partners and 468 Capital, bringing its total to $17.5 million. On 18 August 2021 it announced a $36.7 million Series B led by Kleiner Perkins and Tiger Global, with NEA, Greycroft, Bee Partners and 468 Capital also taking part, and put its total raised at $54.2 million. When MEKAWIRE checked on 2 October 2026, the company's rapidrobotics.com domain redirected to a domain sale page.
- Latest funding
- $36.7M
- Total funding
- $54.2M
- Latest valuation
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- Founded
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- Country
- United States
- Aug 18, 2021Series B$36.7M
- Apr 6, 2021Series A$12M
- Nov 18, 2020Seed$5.5MLed by Bee PartnersGreycroft