The best path to successfully deploying a robot is not building one at all, according to Destro, a startup that came out of stealth Tuesday with an $8 million seed round. Most new robotics companies are focused on finding the right form factor or developing an AI model that can put metal hands to work. Destro has instead built an AI intelligence layer that lets robots work effectively in logistics settings, in part by also telling the human workers what to do.
Brunelle is responsible for automation across about 30 facilities in the U.S. There, Yusen uses fixed automation, like conveyors and sorters, but it is still piloting new technology like trailer-unloading robots and autonomous floor scrubbers. Finding more ways to put technology like that to work is Brunelle’s priority: Yusen’s UK subsidiary has built out a fully autonomous facility and now a similar plan is in the works in the U.S.
When Brunelle met Pawar, Destro was focused on a different challenge in the space—picking and pack, the process by which various goods are sorted into single packages. Brunelle realized his primary challenge was “fundamentally the same problem.” His job involved cross-docking: unloading goods from one truck and sorting them into mixed loads for other trucks that make the final delivery to customers. They agreed nobody was addressing that space and that they could modify their tool to support it.
Since then, they’ve gone all in.” Destro started with a pilot program at one Yusen facility in the Pacific northwest, using three cart-moving robots built by Miva Robotics and operated by Destro’s Vision operating system based on open-weight vision-language-action models (AI systems that interpret camera images and instructions to control a robot’s movements). As human workers unload goods from one truck into different carts, the robots find the full loads and bring them to their destinations. What makes this efficient, in the estimation of Brunelle and Pawar, is that the human, the cart, and the trucks are all directed by Destro’s Mothership operating system.
One offered a robot that could move the carts point-to-point but could not manage loading or unloading. The other came with fleet management tools, but required a person to handle all the orchestration. Destro won because of its ability to apply autonomous direction to the whole process.
Now, Destro is expanding its initial pilot to a full deployment of 26 robots and launching another pilot with 17 robots at Yusen’s facility in Southern California. Pawar plans to take this cross-dock loading workflow and “copy-paste” across thousands of other warehouses that handle this kind of labor. It’s that plan that convinced Base10 Partners and Bonfire Ventures to lead Destro’s seed round, with additional investment from CoFound Partners.
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