Ultra raises $50 million to lease warehouse packing robots

Ultra has raised a $50 million Series A, bringing announced funding to $62 million including an earlier seed round, Fortune reported on 9 October. Framework Ventures led the round. Y Combinator took part. The Brooklyn company leases packing robots rather than selling a humanoid. The machines sit at a workstation, on locking wheels, and pack, sort or kit goods. Humanoids Daily, citing the company, describes deployments in New York, Georgia, New Jersey and Texas, payloads of up to 10 pounds an arm, and power from an ordinary wall outlet.

The model is not Ultra’s. Physical Intelligence’s robot models run the arms, and Ultra sends warehouse data back the other way. Ultra has said one full shift ran at 96.4 percent autonomy on the π0.6 model, and that the systems have packed more than half a million orders. A person still steps in. A single shift’s autonomy is a measurement of that shift, not a promise for every site.