Chicago-based Formic has secured $50 million in growth capital to expand robotic automation across American manufacturing and move beyond task-specific industrial robots into more general-purpose systems.
The financing includes a Series B led by Mercato Partners, with participation from Light Ray Ventures, Lightscape Partners, Citi and existing investors, alongside debt financing provided by S2G Investments.
The company did not disclose the separate equity and debt amounts, meaning the entire $50 million should not be treated as a conventional equity Series B.
Founded in 2020 by Saman Farid and his co-founders, Formic is developing an operating and financing platform intended to make industrial robots easier for manufacturers to deploy.
Its approach differs from robotics companies focused primarily on developing new machines or AI models.
Formic concentrates on the work required to make automation commercially productive: identifying suitable processes, installing systems, financing equipment, maintaining hardware and ensuring robots continue operating.
The company uses a Robots-as-a-Service model, allowing manufacturers to obtain automation through recurring payments rather than large upfront equipment purchases.
Traditional industrial automation can require considerable initial investment, specialized engineering teams and long implementation timelines.
These barriers are particularly difficult for small and medium-sized manufacturers that may benefit from automation but cannot justify the capital expenditure or operational risk.
Formic assumes responsibility for equipment deployment, monitoring and ongoing service, allowing customers to pay for access to functioning robotic systems.
Its installations support tasks including palletizing, case packing, machine tending, kitting and other repetitive manufacturing operations.
The company now operates hundreds of robots across more than 100 facilities in over 30 US states.
According to Formic, those systems have accumulated more than 750,000 hours of live production experience.
It reports 99.6% uptime across its operating fleet and a 97% customer renewal rate.
The company also says it can now deploy robots approximately three times faster than it could a year earlier.
These metrics suggest that Formic has established a meaningful operational base, although the announcement does not provide revenue, profit margins or the detailed methodology underlying its fleet-wide performance measures.
The new capital will support expansion into more sophisticated automation, including general-purpose robots capable of performing a wider variety of tasks.
Formic is working with Physical Intelligence, a company developing robotics foundation models, to combine its AI technology with Formic's production data and operational expertise.
The partnership reflects a broader shift in the robotics industry.
AI models are improving the ability of robots to handle varied objects and tasks, but real-world deployment remains difficult.
Factories require reliable equipment, safety systems, maintenance support, integration with existing production lines and accountability when something goes wrong.
Formic believes its existing infrastructure can accelerate adoption of increasingly capable robotics systems.
The company operates an assembly and testing facility in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and maintains an R&D center in Oakland, California.
It plans to expand into applications including metal fabrication and deepen its presence in aerospace, defense, medical, energy and other industrial markets.
Its operational data may become an increasingly valuable asset.
Each deployment produces information about equipment performance, production conditions, failures and corrective actions.
That information can potentially help improve future installations and adapt general-purpose robotics models to industrial environments.
However, scaling this business requires more than selling software.
Formic must finance equipment, manage physical assets, maintain field operations and support customers across a geographically distributed network.
Its economics depend on equipment utilization, deployment costs, maintenance expenses and the reliability of the robots it operates.
Moving into general-purpose robotics introduces additional uncertainty because those systems have yet to demonstrate the same maturity as conventional industrial automation.
Formic's strategic position is therefore distinct from companies developing robot foundation models.
Rather than betting exclusively on a particular robot or AI architecture, it is building infrastructure to deploy and operate whichever robotic systems prove commercially useful.
The challenge is converting that position into sustainable margins and recurring revenue while maintaining high reliability as the diversity and complexity of its robot fleet increase.