Sunshine Robotics Secures $8.5 Million Seed Funding to Address European Labor Shortage

Sunshine Robotics, a startup focused on developing modular industrial robotics and AI models, has recently emerged from stealth mode with a significant $8.5 million in seed funding. This investment round was led by Plural, an early-stage venture capital firm based in London, with participation from several other venture capital firms including Tapestry, Seedcamp, Tiny.vc, and Prototype Capital. The startup is headquartered in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has declined to comment on its valuation following the funding round.

The primary goal of Sunshine Robotics is to address the acute labor shortage in European manufacturing firms. These businesses currently represent 15% of Europe’s GDP and employ 32 million people. However, nearly a third of this workforce is set to retire in the coming decade, and industrial companies are already struggling to find enough young workers to replace those who are leaving. Sunshine Robotics aims to fill this gap by deploying industrial robots to perform manual tasks such as cutting, welding, fastening, and bolting on production lines.

One of the key advantages of Sunshine Robotics' technology is its ability to deploy two-armed robots on a new industrial production line in less than 10 weeks. This is a significant improvement over traditional industrial robots, which can take up to eight months to deploy due to the need for on-site programming. The startup achieves this rapid deployment by using cameras to gather detailed three-dimensional data on the workstation and recording the steps a human worker takes to complete a task. This data is then used to create a digital twin of the workstation, which is used to train AI models in a simulator. The control software developed in the simulator is then transferred to the real robots.

Sunshine Robotics is not the only company in this space. Other startups, such as Paris-based Inbolt and Physical Intelligence, are also using modern AI techniques and modular designs to make the delivery of robots for factories and warehouses faster and more affordable. However, Sunshine Robotics differentiates itself by using a combination of small AI models and conventional computer coding to control its robots. As the robots master new skills, the time required to deploy them in future environments should shorten considerably.

The company's decision to build standardized "cells," or robotic workstations, makes it easier to train the robots for new tasks. These workstations are designed by Sunshine Robotics but are composed of mostly off-the-shelf parts, making them cheaper to build and maintain. This approach contrasts with traditional industrial robots, which were often designed specifically for one particular assembly line, making them expensive and time-consuming to deploy. Sunshine Robotics is targeting the 60% of European manufacturers that are "high mix, low volume," producing a lot of different parts but a relatively small number of finished products. The company's sweet spot is likely companies producing less than 100,000 parts each year, but it could also work for those producing up to about 400,000 parts.

So far, Sunshine Robotics has signed letters of intent with about 10 customers, including those in supercar development, high-performance batteries, and consumer electronics manufacturing. Andrew Buss, the managing director at Asteelflash, an electronics manufacturer based in England that is an early Sunrise customer, stated that the startup has helped it “adopt cutting-edge innovation at remarkable speed. Just a few months after initial data collection, we had a fully-trained, operational-intelligent robot up and running within hours of delivery.”

Two of Sunshine Robotics' three cofounders are experienced entrepreneurs, and all three have spent time working in tech in Silicon Valley. Tomaz Stolfa, the cofounder and CEO, has co-founded several previous companies, including the voice-over-internet company vox.io and the messaging app builder Layer. Marko Thaler, the company’s chief technology officer, previously founded Airnamics, which built AI brains for robots and drones. Joe Perrott, the third cofounder and chief commercial officer, was head of global program management at PCH International, which helps businesses build supply chains, including finding contract manufacturing partners. Its clients have included major tech companies.

The company currently employs 25 people in Ljubljana, as well as working remotely throughout Europe. Stolfa said it plans to use its new funding to expand its team and ramp up production of its robot workstations. This investment will likely accelerate the company's growth and its ability to address the labor shortage in European manufacturing firms.