Kitchen Robot Company Botinkit Raises $13M

Kitchen robotics startup Botinkit has raised $13 million for its suite of automated cooking robots and to help its plans to expand into the Middle East and Europe next year.

The Series A funding round was led by Forebright, with additional investors including 5Y Capital and Brizan Venture. Notably, the latest round also received investment from Zexiang Li, a professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, who previously provided an angel investment in drone giant DJI.

The latest funding round brings the company’s overall funding to just under $20 million.

The Shenzhen-based startup’s line of kitchen robots are designed for stir-frying and stewing tasks and look similar to a wok. The robot heats and stirs ingredients automatically and features a “digital seasoning system” that can autonomously add up to 16 kinds of seasoning to a dish.

The company’s robotic woks have already been deployed at food stalls inside Walmart and Delibowl in China.

According to the company, it hopes to one day add artificial general intelligence into the robots, optimizing and refining its cooking processes according to user preference.

The company says it hopes to accelerate the hospitality industry towards ‘Tele-Cooking.’

“We are aimed to digitize food-making and food-sharing by combining robots and computing flavor,” the Botinkit website said. “Beyond that, we believe these digital foods from any place can be transferred to anywhere to anyone else at any time, making possible the ever-imagined Tele-Cooking.”