Formic, a Chicago company that rents industrial robots to manufacturers, has raised $50m in new capital made up of a Series B round led by Mercato Partners and debt financing from S2G Investments. The company announced the funding on 22 October 2026.
Light Ray Ventures, Lightscape Partners and Citi also took part, along with other new and existing investors, according to the release. Formic did not say how the $50m splits between equity and debt, and did not disclose a valuation.
The release described the money as growth capital. Ryan Sanders, a managing director at Mercato Partners, is joining Formic's board.
“The robotics industry has made extraordinary progress in what robots can do. But building a capable robot and making it productive in a real factory are two very different challenges.”Saman Farid, Founder and CEO, Formic
What Formic does
Formic sells robots as a service. Manufacturers pay one flat monthly fee that covers the equipment, deployment software, field service, maintenance, financing and performance monitoring, so they do not have to pay for the robots up front.
The company said its fleet has logged more than 750,000 hours of live production, with hundreds of robots in more than 100 facilities across more than 30 states. It reported fleet uptime of 99.6% and a customer renewal rate of 97%, and said it now gets robots into production about three times faster than a year earlier. These figures come from the company.
Formic was founded in 2020 by Saman Farid, its chief executive. It assembles and tests robots in Bolingbrook, Illinois, and develops new capabilities at a research and development centre in Oakland, California.
From single tasks to general-purpose robots
Formic said it will use the money to move from robots that do one specific job to general-purpose robots. It is working with Physical Intelligence, which builds AI foundation models for robots, to adapt those models for factory work using Formic's production data.
The company also plans to strengthen its AI and robotics capabilities, move into metal fabrication, and do more work in aerospace, space, defence, medical, energy and other industrial markets.
Farid said in the release that Formic had spent five years building a platform to get robots working in real plants, and that it was now extending it to general-purpose robotics so manufacturers could add robots without building the infrastructure themselves. He said this would let manufacturers increase output and keep production in the US without betting their balance sheets on it.
Who invested
Sanders said in the release that as robots become more capable, the bottleneck shifts to deploying, servicing and financing them in real plants, and that Formic does all three. He said its customers stay and add more robots.
Marisa Sweeney, a principal at S2G Investments, which provided the debt, pointed to Formic's multi-year operating record across a large fleet as the basis for growth at scale.
The AI Insider and RunTime Wire both reported the same amount, lead investor and participants, and also noted that the split between the Series B and the debt was not disclosed. Neither gave a total raised to date or details of earlier rounds.
Company website: formic.co