Relex Solutions Raises $568M for Growth of AI Robot Fleet

Finnish software maker Relex Solutions raised 500 million euros ($568 million) in new investment capital at a 5-billion-euro ($5.6 billion) valuation through a fundraising round that will help the company better meet retailers’ needs for artificial intelligence robots during ongoing supply chain slowdowns.

Blackstone Growth led Relex’s latest funding round, which also included several institutional investors taking a minority stake in the company. The new money comes after venture capital firm TCV invested $200 million in the platform.

Grocery stores and other retailers use Relex’s AI robots to better forecast “which products to buy, in what quantities, and where best to allocate space for the inventory in stores and warehouses,” according to a Bloomberg report Thursday (Feb. 17).

“Global supply chain disruptions were one of the reasons why we decided to do the round, to enable us to grow,” Relex Chief Executive Officer Mikko Karkkainen said in an interview with Bloomberg. “The past couple of years have shown many companies vulnerabilities in their supply and value chains.”

Karkkainen said the company will use some of the fresh capital to hire hundreds of employees in software development, marketing, customer support and delivery to work with the 1,300 people already employed by the company.

Relex is also exploring strategic acquisitions, he said, without revealing possible targets or how advanced the talks are. The U.S. is its biggest market, with about one-third of new sales on American shores.

Related: Cost of Proposed US AI Bill May Outweigh Its Benefits

In early February, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Sen, Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022 to bring transparency and oversight to software, algorithms and other systems used to make automated decisions.

The bill requires companies to conduct impact assessments for bias, effectiveness and other factors, when using automated decision systems to make critical decisions. The bill also gives the Federal Trade Commission the authority to require the companies to comply with this bill and to create a public repository of these automated systems.

This bill would apply only to companies with more than $50 million in average annual gross receipts that make automated decisions concerning more than a million consumers.