Diligent Robotics Launches Moxi Robotic Hospital Assistant

Diligent Robotics, the artificial intelligence companybuilding socially intelligent robots that help people with their jobs, islaunching its first product, a hospital robot assistant named Moxi, out of betaand into the market, beginning with the roll-out of Moxi into a Texas hospitalstarting October 2, 2019.

Along with announcing the market availability of Moxi,Diligent Robotics also announced that it has raised $3 million in seed fundingto fuel the launch of Moxi. The round was co-led by True Ventures and UbiquityVentures and included investment from Next Coast Ventures, Capital Factory,Pathbreaker Ventures, Boom Capital, Grit Ventures, and additional angelinvestors. It followed two prior fundraising rounds including a $2.1-millionseed round in January 2018 led by True Ventures and early support from theNational Science Foundation in the form of Small Business Innovation Researchgrants totaling $725,000.

Last year, Diligent Robotics launched Moxi, recently awardedas one of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas in 2019, into a beta phase whichconsisted of month-long trials at four U.S. hospitals. Following the positiveresults from Moxi’s trials, Diligent Robotics has completed its beta phase andis now launching Moxi into market with full-time hospital partners.

“Our vision is to improve the way people think about theirwork by giving them more time to utilize their unique human skills and letfriendly robot assistants efficiently take care of their chores,” said AndreaThomaz, CEO and co-Founder of Diligent Robotics.

The investment from this round will support DiligentRobotics’ launch of Moxi into its first full-time hospital customers and theircontinued investment in product strategy and development in both hardware andsoftware.

“Over the last year, Diligent Robotics has made rapidprogress in delivering and testing Moxi in multiple hospitals,” said RohitSharma, partner at True Ventures and board member for Diligent Robotics. “Theteam continues to demonstrate unmatched robotics-specific innovation bycombining social intelligence and human-guided learning capabilities.”

In addition to this funding round and completing Moxi’s betaphase, Diligent Robotics has reached key milestones in the last year includinghiring Josh Tippy, head of Clinical Integrations. Additionally, DiligentRobotics’ CTO and Co-Founder, Vivian Chu, received MIT Technology Review’s 35Under 35 for 2019 award, and Thomaz was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 100 FemaleFounders in 2019 Building America's Most Innovative & Ambitious Businesses.

“It is now obvious that robots will improve our quality oflife, but only when implemented thoughtfully,” said Sunil Nagaraj, partner atUbiquity Ventures and newly named board member for Diligent Robotics. “I amlucky to partner with such an experienced and agile team as they use Moxirobots to make hospitals better places for patients, nurses, and doctors.”