Known for its Tally robot, Simbe Robotics has announced two separate funding deals—a $26 million Series A, and an inventory financing agreement with SoftBank Robotics, which will enhance the company’s ability to “increase efficiencies in production and deployment” of its Tally robot.

Simbe says that it will use the blend of equity and inventory financing to grow its team, expand its fleet of Tally robots into new markets, accelerate its deployments with existing partners, and unlock more value in-store with new capabilities.

“Both our equity financing partners and the SoftBank Robotics team are deeply aligned with Simbe’s vision to revitalize physical retail through data,” says cofounder and CEO Brad Bogolea. 

“We are at a pivotal time of growth and value their support as we continue to transform retail at a global scale.”

The equity capital will focus on a variety of business operations, including growing the Simbe team, scaling sales, marketing and customer success functions, and continued investment in research and development.

In terms of the inventory financing, Simbe notes that after partnering with SoftBank Robotics America last year, it was able to leverage SoftBank Robotics' “international reach and operational efficiencies” to grow its business across the world. Simbe and SoftBank Robotics will now expand their collaboration to include inventory financing, which will accelerate Simbe’s global deployment of the Tally robot.

The funds will support the manufacturing of another 1,000 Tally units over the next two years. Thus far, SoftBank Robotics has deployed more than 25,000 robots across the world, and the entities note that it has the infrastructure in place to support Simbe’s desire to scale manufacturing, shipping, deployment, and field services of Tally robots globally.

“Building on the momentum of our partnership with Simbe and our focus on augmenting the workforce through automation, inventory financing was a natural next step to bring more Tally robots to market, faster,” says Kass Dawson, head of Business Strategy at Softbank Robotics. 

“The retail space is hungry for autonomous solutions to common pain points, and Simbe has exceeded expectations in designing, building, and deploying Tally robots worldwide.”