Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Kiva Systems collects $10M in third round

Woburn-based maker of robotic material handling systems for distribution centers, Kiva Systems Inc., reports it has brought in a $10 million Series C investment from current and new investors. The funding, led by previous investor Bain Capital Ventures, will be used to expand manufacturing and service capacity as the company completes multiple deployments for customers throughout the U.S. in 2006, officials said.

The new funding brings the company's total amount raised to more than $18 million.

Kiva has demonstrated a 200 percent productivity improvement among pilot tests over the past year in various distribution centers and is engaged in several full-scale design and production deployments for 2006, according to Kiva Systems founder and CEO Mick Mountz. The company has a long standing relationship with Framingham's Staples Inc., and has executed a pilot and full-scale test for the company, said Mountz in an interview earlier in the year.

Founded by Mountz in 2002, Kiva remained in stealth mode until last March. The company made its first products publicly available in January of this year.

Kiva's system is based on three parts: the robot, the pods and the guidance and tracking software, and can present a new pod to each worker within a distribution center every six seconds.