Destro indicates that the best path to successfully deploying robots is not simply to build a robot directly. The company ended its stealth mode on Tuesday and announced the completion of a $8 million seed round of financing.
Most new robotics companies are looking for suitable designs or developing AI models that enable metal robotic arms to truly perform tasks. Destro, on the other hand, has built a layer of AI intelligent systems that allow robots to work efficiently in logistics scenarios. Part of the reason for this is that these systems also instruct human workers on what to do.
“Many robotics companies start with robot engineers who think, ‘What cool things can I create?’” said Manthan Pawar, the founder of Destro, to TechCrunch. “One of the main reasons we are able to gain an advantage over other robotics companies is that we are not a robotics company ourselves.”
Pawar holds a Master's degree in Robotics from the Tandon School of Engineering at New York University and has worked in the US supply chain and robotics industry for about eight years. He explained, "Our approach is that we have a very good understanding of our customers' problems, and we are actually on track to achieve positive cash flow by the end of this year."
Richard Brunelle, the Director of Automation for the US operations of the American logistics group Yusen Logistics, helped this startup find its direction. Brunelle is responsible for the automation work at around 30 facilities in the United States. In these facilities, Yusen uses fixed automation equipment such as conveyor belts and sorters, but they are also piloting new technologies such as trailer unloading robots and autonomous floor cleaning robots.
Brunelle indicates that finding more ways to make such technology effective is his priority. Yusen The subsidiary in the UK has already built a fully automated facility, and the United States is also advancing similar plans. Brunelle When meeting with Pawar, Destro was focusing on another challenge in that field at the time – sorting and packaging, which is the process of grouping different products into individual packages.
Brunelle realized that the core challenges he faced "are essentially the same problem." His work involves cross-transfer: unloading goods from one truck, sorting them into mixed loads, loading them onto other trucks, and completing the final delivery.
“I asked them if they were willing to adjust the plan to adapt to this cross-transfer environment, because I thought no one had done that at that time,” he said to TechCrunch. “They went back, thought it over carefully, and then came back excitedly. They agreed that no one was covering that area, and that they could modify the tools to support it. Since then, they have been fully committed to it.”
Destro was initially piloted at a facility in the northwestern Pacific region of the United States at Yusen. It utilized three cart-handling robots manufactured by Miva Robotics, which were controlled by Destro's operating system based on the open-source Vision-Language-Action model Vision. Such AI systems are capable of interpreting camera images and instructions, thereby controlling the movements of the robots.
When manual workers unload goods from a truck onto different carts, robots find the carts loaded with goods and transport them to their destinations. Brunelle and Pawar believe that this process is efficient because humans, carts, and trucks are all uniformly scheduled by the Mothership operating system of Destro.
"We have reduced the labor intensity of this process and gotten rid of paper-based procedures," said Brunelle. "Now everything is systematized."
This is very important because Yusen also communicated with two other well-known robotics startups, but neither of them was able to integrate into the existing workflow. One of these startups provided robots that could only move carts point-to-point, but they were unable to manage loading or unloading; the other startup, although it had fleet management tools, required manual coordination for all tasks. Destro won out because it was capable of autonomously scheduling the entire process.
Today, Destro is expanding the initial pilot project to a full deployment of 26 robots, and another pilot with 17 robots has been launched at the facility in Yusen located in Southern California. Pawar plans to "copy and paste" this cross-transport loading workflow into thousands of warehouses that handle similar tasks. It is this plan that convinced Base10 Partners and Bonfire Ventures to lead the seed round of Destro, with CoFound Partners also participating in the investment.
Destro may face challenges in workflows that require higher dexterity and operational capabilities. General-purpose robot bodies and open-source models have not yet been proven viable for such tasks, and it is also unclear whether companies that are developing foundational models, ultra-dexterous manipulators, or general-purpose humanoid robots will provide these tools to companies like Destro instead of competing for this business themselves.
Pawar still believes that he has found the layer where value will be accumulated, and that the company can make use of the substantial funds that have flowed into the research on new AI models and robotic components.
"Robots are a kind of platform. Each layer of the model is also a kind of platform. But we will build a framework around it," Pawar said to TechCrunch. "This framework is much more complex and also more valuable; without it, these workflows would simply not be possible, right?"
For now, competing with those future-oriented robot manufacturers is probably not a problem. Brunelle says that he has yet to find the right application scenario for humanoid bipedal robots, but he is evaluating the potential pilot projects for wheeled humanoid robots.
“After all, we won’t just install automation in a building just because the technology is interesting,” said Brunelle. “It must solve real operational problems. If it can make operations more efficient, stable, and flexible, it is ultimately our customers who will benefit.”
Destro will present the solutions of this "robot company that is not a robot company" on TechCrunch Disrupt in the coming weeks. Welcome to join us in October to see Destro and other participants in the Battlefield competition in person.
