Miso Robotics, the US-based developer of a robotic assistant for restaurants, has received $10m in a series B round led by patent licensing company Acacia Research Corporation.
The round included events hospitality services provider Levy, holding company Cali Group and its restaurant chain subsidiary CaliBurger, Joseph Essas, chief technology officer of restaurant reservation platform OpenTable, and six members of Cali’s management.
Founded in 2016 with Cali as its founding investor, Miso makes robots and machine learning-based software to help restaurants automate their kitchen operations.
The company’s first product, Flippy, is a burger preparation robot that includes built-in cameras and thermal sensors to cook patties with precision.
CaliBurger aims to install Flippy at more than 50 of its restaurants by the end of 2019. The series B funding will enable Miso to press ahead with the development of more robotic kitchen assistants as it seeks additional uses for the underlying machine learning software.
Essas has joined Miso’s advisory board along with Charless Fowlkes, an associate professor at University of California, Irvine, and Aaron Ames, a professor from California Institute of Technology.
Miso Robotics had previously $3.1m raised a July 2017 series A round featuring Acacia Research, Match Robotics VC, undisclosed strategic investors and, according to CNBC, CaliBurger.