Vecna Robotics today said that it has brought on Karl Iagnemma as CEO and closed $14.5 million in funding from existing investors. The Waltham, Mass.-based company provides mobile robots for materials handling.
Iagnemma has been a robotics researcher and an entrepreneur. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he authored publications on robotics and artificial intelligence that have been cited more than 20,000 times.
“I got my Ph.D. in 2001 and led the Robotic Mobility Group at MIT from 2001 to 2013, where I did fundamental research into wheeled mobile robots, the foundational technology for autonomous mobile robots [AMRs] and robotaxis,” Iagnemma told Automated Warehouse.
At MIT, Iagnemma met Daniel Theobald, a fellow alumnus and founder and chairman of Vecna Robotics, while working on a DARPA project. In 2020, Iagnemma made an angel investment in the company.
“I was convinced that Vecna had the world’s best technology to address key workflows in this space,” he said. “It’s a $275 billion opportunity, with 2.5 billion sq. ft. of warehouse space.”
From autonomous vehicles to robots
In 2013, Iagnemma co-founded and served as CEO of autonomous vehicle (AV) developer nuTonomy, which conducted public robotaxi pilots in Singapore.
“nuTonomy launched the first fully Level 4 self-driving vehicles in urban environments,” he recalled. “We raised about $20 million but saw that we needed billions to proceed.”
Tier 1 automotive supplier Aptiv acquired nuTonomy in 2017 for $405 million.
“We then saw that we needed an even bigger partner,” Iagnemma said. “That’s what led us to Hyundai in 2019.”
He was founding CEO of Motional, a $4 billion joint venture between Aptiv and Hyundai Motor Group. In May 2024, Hyundai acquired shares of Motional from Aptiv for $448 million.
“Automation in logistics today is similar to the current state of robotaxis, in that there is a massive market opportunity but little market penetration,” stated Iagnemma.
“I join Vecna Robotics at an inflection point in the material handling market, where operators are poised to adopt automation at scale,” he added. “Vecna is uniquely positioned to shape the market with state-of-art technology and products that are easy to purchase, deploy, and operate reliably across many different workflows.”
What’s the biggest difference between AVs and AMRs?
“With autonomous vehicles, you have to watch out for drunk jaywalkers, the weather, and baby strollers,” replied Iagnemma. “AMRs are ready to be deployed at scale today.”
“One of the first things I did when I joined Vecna is I went to a 1.2 million sq. ft. customer site,” he noted. “There were remarkably few people, and the robots were operating very reliably. It was a more constrained environment [than for AVs], but the robots are still complex. They’re not just technology but products that must operate continuously.”
Iagnemma joins as CaseFlow comes out
Vecna Robotics makes autonomous forklifts, tuggers, pallet trucks, and pallet jacks. It also offers the Pivotal software and a round-the-clock Command Center to help manufacturers, warehouses, and distribution operators automate critical tasks, maximize throughput, and quickly scale.
“Pivotal is a great example of the large-scale thinking that is embodied in Vecna,” said Iagnemma. “Some competitors are building widgets for specific workflow products, but Vecna is developing an ecosystem. It’s not just a product for one use case but an AI system that optimizes the performance of every asset, including automation and workers.”
Last month, Vecna introduced the CaseFlow system for optimized human-robot case picking. It offers CaseFlow through a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model.
“I was excited to join with the release of CaseFlow,” Iagnemma said. “Case picking is one of the highest-value workflows, and this is the only truly flexible way to do it. We’ve seen customer sites with ROI [return on investment] in less than a year, with more than doubling of productivity. It’s not just a simulation.”
Vecna to invest in new products, strategic partnerships
In June, Vecna raised more than $100 million in a Series C round and named Michael Helmbrecht as chief operating officer. The company’s previous CEOs included Dan Patt and Craig Malloy.
Vecna said it plans to use its latest $14.5 million in funding to accelerate technology and product enhancements.
“My goal as CEO is to continue investing in product development and ‘deepen our moat’ in the automated forklift area,” said Iagnemma. “Another is to achieve scale through new products and strategic partnerships, not at the facility scale but at the enterprise scale.”
“Karl Iagnemma combines exceptional robotics expertise with hands-on leadership, making him the perfect fit to drive innovation and propel Vecna Robotics into its next phase of growth,” said Nick Solaro, general partner at Drive Capital. “We are confident that his extensive network will be instrumental in forging key strategic partnerships, securing the company’s long-term leadership in the market.”