Social distancing, peak online shopping, and supply-chain shakeups made 2020 a blow-the-roof-off year for materials-handling robot manufacturers that could scale up quickly. Case in point; Seegrid, the Pittsburgh-based builder of self-driving industrial vehicles, doubled its revenue in 2020, hired 125 new employees to increase its workforce to 325, acquired startup Box Robotics to expand its 3D Lidar data-interpretation capabilities and secured $52 million in additional financing.
But Seegrid was growing rapidly even before the pandemic year. In 2019, the AMR maker with roots in Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics program hit a milestone when it doubled its year-over-year revenue.
“We’re in aggressive growth mode,” Rock told IndustryWeek in a late-2020 interview. “The demand has grown year over year consistently, and COVID certainly accentuated that demand.”
Rock talked with IndustryWeek about what’s ahead for Seegrid and the importance of culture in its success.
