Startup Mytra launches robotic material handling platform

The venture-backed startup firm Mytra has launched a robotic storage and retrieval platform that it says will automate the common industrial task of moving and storing material, and says it has $78 million in financing to develop it.

According to South San Francisco, California-based Mytra, current process in warehouses and manufacturing facilities have changed very little in 50 years. And yet the legacy way of operating warehouses — using people and forklifts — needs to change, due to growing pressures on manufacturing and supply chain, in addition to rapidly growing labor shortages.

Mytra says its system offers a solution, using just three components: bots, a simple and repeating matrix structure, and edge-intelligent software. Together, those units support high-density, customizable grid storage that automates pallet and case handling without the complexity of forklifts, pallet jacks, conveyors, elevators, and other automation.

That system is currently deployed in production at select Albertsons Cos. distribution centers, where it buffers and sequences inventory prior to shipping to stores, the firm said.

"Material flow makes up the lion's share of the work in a warehouse but is still largely done the same way it was a century ago. This is because the alternatives are too complex, have too many parts, and are customized for specific applications," Chris Walti, co-founder and CEO at Mytra, said in a release. "We're taking a radically different approach by reducing the number of parts and moving the focus from hardware to software… This will drive massive efficiencies not only within warehouses but also in adjacent transportation and manufacturing operations."

Mytra is backed by several investors, including Greenoaks, who led the company’s Series B, Eclipse, who led the previous seed and Series A rounds, in addition to Co-founder and Chairman of Okta Frederic Kerrest’s 515 Ventures, and individual investors, Garry Tan, Lachy Groom, among other individual and corporate partners.

“Warehouses are the backbone of the global economy,” Neil Shah, partner at Greenoaks, said in a release. “Yet the vast majority of the world’s warehouses remain manual, and even those that are automated remain too complex and too rigid to meet the challenges of modern supply chains. By creating a software-defined automation system, Mytra breaks the trade-off between automation and flexibility, abstracting away the complexity of hardware, increasing density, dramatically boosting throughput, and delivering a resilient system that can adapt as quickly as the needs of customers change.”