Ex-Tesla robot chief raises $78m for a new way to move materials
25 July 2024 
A US start-up has emerged from two years of stealth development to announce a new automated form of warehousing and material handling that does away with traditional forklifts, pallet jacks, conveyors and elevators. San-Francisco-based Mytra has already attracted $78m of financing for its technology, which uses a combination of hardware and software to move materials in three dimensions and will “revolutionise” supply chains and material-handling. It is designed to automate the most common industrial task: moving and storing materials.
The company was set up by Chris Walti, who spent seven years at Tesla leading the Model 3 material flow team as well as the Tesla Bot (now Optimus) humanoid robot programme, and Ahmad Baitalmal, who led software developments at Tesla and at the EV-maker, Rivian. They had both experienced the difficulties of implementing automated warehouses and manufacturing facilities, and felt it was “time for a reset”.
They set out to develop a simple automated way to move and store materials. The result is a system that moves any type of inventory (palettes, totes or cases, for example) weighing up to 3,000lb (1,360kg) in any direction (X,Y or Z) using cells, mobile robots and software. They reckon they can automate up to 60% of the material-handling process, compared to around 10% using existing technologies.
There are three key components: the bots which move the materials; a simple, repeated matrix structure for storage; and edge-intelligent software, which simplifies deployment, cuts costs, and avoids single points of failure.
The customisable system moves inventory from any cell to any adjacent cell in any direction. It uses advanced machine vision and sensor technologies for precise, real-time responses. The autonomous AI-driven transport robots make independent decisions in real time.
Mytra’s software optimises bot routes, manages inventory, and learns and improves continuously, adjusting to changing customer demands. Material flows are software-defined, allowing users to unlock new applications and future-proof their operations.
“Material flow makes up the lion’s share of the work in a warehouse but is still largely done the same way it was a century ago,” Walti points out. “This is because the alternatives are too complex, have too many parts, and are customised for specific applications. We’re taking a radically different approach by reducing the number of parts and moving the focus from hardware to software.
“We are the first and only solution that can universally automate many of the most labour-intensive, costly and complex aspects of material flow, which are the ‘red blood cells’ of any industrial operation,” he adds. “Mytra enables infinite ways to move, store, and retrieve materials, changing applications instantly – all of which are controlled by software. This will drive massive efficiencies not only within warehouses, but also in adjacent transportation and manufacturing operations.”
Mytra estimates that its system can cut warehouse labour hours by up to 88%, and double internal rates of return compared with current best-in-class technologies.
The first real-world installations of the technology are at the US supermarket chain, Albertsons, which is using it to buffer and sequence inventory at its distribution centres, before shipping to stores. “Mytra’s automation system offers unique flexibility to address many different applications using the same hardware,” says the company’s vice-president of supply chain automation, Mustafa Harcar. The “highly simplified approach has the potential to unlock new levels of efficiency, with the confidence that the system can adapt to future needs,” he adds.
Mytra’s investors include Greenoaks and Eclipse. It will use the latest round of funding to expand its team (which currently numbers around 85), scale its technology, and deploy a next generation of systems to blue-chip companies to automate applications that today are still highly manual and labour-intensive.
“Warehouses are the backbone of the global economy, points out Neil Shah, a partner at lead investor, Greenoaks. “Yet the vast majority of the world’s warehouses remain manual, and even those that are automated remain too complex and too rigid to meet the challenges of modern supply chains. By creating a software-defined automation system, Mytra breaks the trade-off between automation and flexibility, abstracting away the complexity of hardware, increasing density, dramatically boosting throughput, and delivering a resilient system that can adapt as quickly as the needs of customers change. By making best-in-class automation available to all, we believe that Chris and his team will define the next generation of modern warehousing.”
Mytra: LinkedIn
