October 1, 2019 – Product Trust Investments is thrilled to announce its participation in Diligent Robotics Series 2 Seed fundraising.
Austin, Texas-based Andrea Thomaz and Vivian Chu co-founded Diligent Robotics in 2017. They create robot assistants that assist people with chores so they can focus on the work they care most about. Moxi is their first hospital robot assistant that helps clinical teams with their routine, non-patient facing tasks so they have more time for patient care.
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.”
True Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures led the funding round, with participation from North Coast Ventures, Capital Factory, Pathbreaker Ventures, Boom Capital, Grit Ventures, and angel investors including Product Trust Investments. 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.
“Over the last year, Diligent Robotics has made rapid progress in delivering and testing Moxi in multiple hospitals,” said Rohit Sharma, partner at True Ventures and a member of Diligent Robotics’ board. “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.”
Moxi is available in a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model. “Cost is based on the customized utilization of each Moxi robot for every hospital’s particular needs,” explained Thomaz.
“As the first robotics company to introduce a social robot into a hospital full-time, we’re laser-focused on quality, not quantity, when it comes to our first few full-time hospital implementations,” she said. “We will have other exciting news to share later in 2019 and 2020.”