California-based Chef Robotics has raised US$43.1 million in new Series A funding, which will be used to finance the company’s AI-driven robotics system for meal assembly, which will save customers’ capex costs. 

Avataar Ventures led the round, which brings the start-up’s total capital raised to US$65.6 million.

With the new funding, Chef Robotics aims to fasten production deployments of its Robotics-as-a-Service systems in a “highly variable” food and foodservice sector. This will include collecting more production data in the field while assembling meals for better model performance.

The San Francisco-headquartered company says that this expansion can create more runtime in production, which means that the robotics system may be able to manipulate ingredients from the get-go.

“Robotics is really having a moment right now. The innovations in AI have unlocked the potential of Embodied AI for robotics. We believe we’re in the pole position to scale given all the real-world production training data we already have,” says Rajat Bhageria, founder and CEO of Chef Robotics.

Chef Robotics is currently available in the US and Canada and plans to expand to the UK market this year. Its robot deployments have procured meals for brands such as Amy’s Kitchen, Sunbasket, Chef Bombay, and Cafe Spice.

“AI in the physical world is happening right now with robotics. Food is one of the largest markets in the world. Industrial AI is already winning, and food packaging automation is quietly transforming how we get our meals. Chef has quickly cemented its standing as the industry leader in AI-enabled robotics for meal assembly at over 44 million servings produced and counting,” says Mohan Kumar, founder and managing partner of Avataar Ventures.

Last month, Bagheria discussed how the company’s technology uses robots and computer vision to handle food ingredients while maneuvering various technical and business challenges with Food Ingredients First. He also highlighted its consistent output, waste reduction, and cost-saving benefits.