Robot maker Bossa Nova, based in S.F., cutting staff by 61
A San Francisco robotics company will lay off or furlough 61 workers, including 26 employees in the Bay Area.
Bossa Nova Robotics, which makes robots designed to help retailers with inventory, announced layoffs and furloughs for 26 workers in San Francisco and Mountain View, along with 35 employees in two Pennsylvania offices.
The majority of layoffs were in the software and operations departments, according to a notice filed with California officials. The furloughs have the potential to become permanent layoffs, according to the notice.
The company spun off from the Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute in 2005 and has raised more than $101 million in 12 fundraising rounds, including $6 million in debt financing in early March 2020, according to data from Crunchbase. The company’s robots are in retailers such as Walmart.
A spokesperson for the company confirmed the layoffs but declined to comment further.
Shelfscanning robots and other grocery store and retail robots could become more popular during the pandemic, as they can help increase social distancing in stores and reduce the number of employees working at the same time.
“The global pandemic has highlighted a need for better data, automation and resiliency across retail supply chains, and (has) further accelerated technology adoption trends that have been building for years,” said Brad Bogolea, CEO of Simbe, which makes a competing robotics device.