Diligent Robotics Lands $3 Million in Funding and Launches its Hospital Assistant Robot Moxi

Diligent Robotics has launched its first product, a hospital assistant named Moxi.

The Austin-based company has been beta testing its robot and starting Wednesday Moxi will be working fulltime in a Texas hospital.

Diligent Robotics also announced it has raised $3 million in seed-stage funding to fuel the launch of Moxi. True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures co-led the investment with participation from Next Coast Ventures, Capital Factory, Pathbreaker Ventures, Boom Capital, Grit Ventures and additional angel investors.

Diligent Robotics, founded in 2017, has raised $2.1 million in a previous seed round of funding in January of 2018 and also received Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Science Foundation worth $725,000.

During its beta test, Diligent Robotics tested Moxi at four U.S. hospitals. It was received positively. Moxi also received recognition as one of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas in 2019.

 “Our vision is to improve the way people think about their work by giving them more time to utilize their unique human skills, and let friendly robot assistants efficiently take care of their chores,” Andrea Thomaz, CEO and Co-Founder of Diligent Robotics, said in a news release. “We are proud to have the full support of our past investors as well as new key investors to accelerate the roll-out of Moxi robots into hospitals.”

Diligent Robotics plans to use the funds raised to continue investing in product strategy and development in both hardware and software. It is also using the funds to support the launch of Moxi into the market.

 “Over the last year, Diligent Robotics has made rapid progress in delivering and testing Moxi in multiple hospitals,” Rohit Sharma, partner at True Ventures and board member for Diligent Robotics, said in a news release. “The team continues to demonstrate unmatched robotics-specific innovation by combining social intelligence and human-guided learning capabilities. We’re thrilled to continue our partnership with Vivian and Andrea as they build a world-class, leading robotics company.”

In addition, Diligent Robotics has reached key milestones in the last year including hiring Josh Tippy, Head of Clinical Integrations. Additionally, Diligent Robotics’ CTO and Co-Founder, Vivian Chu, received MIT Technology Review’s highly prestigious 35 Under 35 for 2019 award, and Thomaz was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 Female Founders in 2019 Building America’s Most Innovative & Ambitious Businesses.

“It is now obvious that robots will improve our quality of life, but only when implemented thoughtfully,” Sunil Nagaraj, partner at Ubiquity Ventures and newly named board member for Diligent Robotics, said in a news release. “I am lucky to partner with such an experienced and agile team as they use Moxi robots to make hospitals better places for patients, nurses, and doctors.”