Harvest Automation, Inc., a robotics company developing solutions for material handling, today announced that it has secured $4.0M in Series A financing from three leading venture firms including Life Sciences Partners (LSP), the Midpoint Food & Ag Fund, and MTDC.

The HarvestAI team is made up of engineers and executives who have invented and successfully brought to market many leading robotic and other technology platforms including the Roomba(TM) from iRobot Corporation. Team backgrounds also include members from DEKA R&D, Draper Labs, Vitesse Semiconductor and Bear River Associates.

“Our expertise is in applying practical robotics to improve worker productivity with a focus on harsh, manual labor tasks,” said Charlie Grinnell, founder and CEO of HarvestAI. “Traditional material handling robots have been associated with fixed-function factory automation, which generally operate in indoor, tightly controlled work spaces. We have a very different solution that uses teams of small, agile, mobile robots (AMR’s) designed to work flexibly with human workers in a broad range of uncontrolled environments making them suitable for many market applications.”

“The quality and strength of the management team were the primary reasons we invested in HarvestAI. Their broad background in applying robotic technology and building highly successful products and companies was very compelling. We are excited about HarvestAI’s long-term potential as a new Midpoint portfolio company,” commented Andrew Ziolkowski, Managing Partner at Midpoint.

“Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation has a history of supporting companies that are in emerging sectors and robotics is an area that we in New England are uniquely poised to capture,” said Dina Routhier, Principal at MTDC. “Improving worker productivity and leveraging today’s technical approaches is critical and we believe in HarvestAI and their market.”

About Harvest Automation, Inc.
Founded by experts in using robotics for enhancing productivity the company is focused on material handling and based in Groton, MA. For more information please visit http://www.harvestai.com.

About Life Sciences Partners
LSP (Life Sciences Partners) is a leading independent European investment firm, providing financing to private and public life-science companies. Since the late 1980s, LSP’s management has invested in a large number of highly innovative enterprises, many of which have grown to become leaders of the global life-science industry. For example, LSP was a founding investor in Crucell, DNage, Qiagen, Rhein Biotech and Pharming. With over EUR 500 million under management and offices in Amsterdam, Munich and Boston, LSP is one of Europe’s largest and most experienced specialist life-science investors.

About Midpoint
The MidPoint Food & Ag Funds is an Indianpolis, IN venture capital fund investing in promising early stage companies that bring valuable innovations to growing segments of the food & agricultural industries.

About MTDC
The Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation is a leading edge venture capital firm that addresses the “capital gap” for start-up and expansion of early-stage technology companies operating in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. MTDC has invested in many of Massachusetts’ most promising new technology-based companies. For more information, please visit http://www.mtdc.com.

Contacct
Wade Appelman
VP Sales and Marketing
Harvest Automation
P:  617-314-7957
E: