Locus Robotics, a US warehouse autonomous-mobile-robot unicorn, has closed a G round of US$41.6 million (about RMB 280 million), with the entire amount coming from existing shareholders. The round is not yet closed and the company has not disclosed a target, the full investor list, use of proceeds or the latest valuation.
Founded in 2015 and a unicorn since its 2021 E round, Locus has raised more than US$430 million in total, with Goldman Sachs and Tiger Global long among its backers. Rather than chase the fully driverless warehouse narrative, it anchors on human-robot collaboration through a robots-as-a-service model: customers avoid a large upfront hardware buy and flex robot counts with order seasonality, a direct answer to third-party-logistics pain.
Why incumbents keep adding
The LocusONE platform uses lidar and SLAM to map a warehouse on entry, with no floor QR codes, and dispatches mixed robot fleets to split picking and transport work. At DHL sites the system has completed hundreds of millions of picks across more than 350 global locations, lifting efficiency about 23-fold over pure manual work with high renewal rates. Rivals include Zebra’s Fetch, Ocado’s 6 River Systems and China’s Geekplus.
Analysts read the insider-only round as a vote on business model, not hype. Ageing warehouses fear the cost and downtime of retrofits; Locus slots into existing sites with low intrusion. But utilisation swings and multi-fleet tuning remain real, and lab results do not equal floor output. The bar has moved from hardware specs to running the whole warehousing service.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robot report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.
Translated and adapted from OFweek Robot (https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-09/ART-8321203-8420-30701760.html).