Mag­a­zino raises €21 mil­lion to expand robot soft­ware ACROS​.AI on third party hardware 

Munich, Sep­tem­ber 24th, 2020 — The robot­ics com­pany Mag­a­zino has closed a Series B financ­ing round of €21 mil­lion. Junghein­rich AG and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) are lead­ing the round, with exist­ing investors also par­tic­i­pat­ing. The cap­i­tal raised will be used to expand inter­na­tional sales activ­i­ties and above all to accel­er­ate the expan­sion of the “ACROS​.AI” soft­ware stack — a soft­ware plat­form for intel­li­gent robots devel­oped by Mag­a­zino that is also used on third-party hardware.

At the same time, Junghein­rich and Mag­a­zino agreed on a broad strate­gic coop­er­a­tion and intend to com­bine their skill sets in the field of mobile automation.

“Mag­a­zino is a highly inno­v­a­tive young com­pany that has out­stand­ing skills in the area of nav­i­ga­tion and con­trol soft­ware for mobile automa­tion. This invest­ment fol­lows our strat­egy in the field of automa­tion and will make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the accel­er­ated expan­sion of our busi­ness with auto­mated trucks,” says Dr Lars Brzoska, Chair­man of the Board of Man­age­ment of Junghein­rich AG.

Automa­tion is one of the biggest growth dri­vers in the intral­o­gis­tics sec­tor. Dou­ble-digit growth rates are expected in this seg­ment in the com­ing years. This trend is dri­ven above all by the per­sis­tently strong growth in online trade and the global short­age in logis­tics spe­cial­ists, par­tic­u­larly fork­lift operators.

“Jungheinrich’s invest­ment in Mag­a­zino demon­strates the high mar­ket demand for our robot­ics soft­ware ACROS​.AI and our robots. With it, Mag­a­zino will take on a cen­tral role in soft­ware in the rapidly grow­ing mar­ket for mobile robot­ics,” says Fred­erik Brant­ner, CEO and Co-Founder of Magazino.

In addi­tion to the invest­ments made by the exist­ing share­hold­ers and Junghein­rich AG, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is pro­vid­ing Mag­a­zino GmbH with financ­ing of up to €12 mil­lion. The invest­ment from the EU bank is secured by a guar­an­tee from the Euro­pean Fund for Strate­gic Invest­ments (EFSI). The EFSI is at the heart of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe, under which the EIB and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion work together as strate­gic part­ners to chan­nel pri­vate cap­i­tal into projects that strengthen the sus­tain­abil­ity and com­pet­i­tive­ness of the Euro­pean econ­omy. In many of these trans­ac­tions, EIB involve­ment has an impor­tant sig­nalling effect to pri­vate investors, whose risk is often sig­nif­i­cantly reduced by the EU bank’s in-depth analy­sis and involvement.

“Our invest­ment sup­ports a young, medium-sized com­pany which, with its focus on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and automa­tion, is of par­tic­u­lar strate­gic value for the EU”, said Ambroise Fay­olle, EIB Vice Pres­i­dent respon­si­ble for busi­ness in Ger­many. “These sec­tors are to a large extent knowl­edge-based and cru­cial for the future inno­v­a­tive capac­ity of Euro­pean indus­try. They make our econ­omy less prone to crises. I am par­tic­u­larly pleased that in such a chal­leng­ing year we are pro­mot­ing a project that ben­e­fits the com­pany itself but can also ini­ti­ate new devel­op­ments with its cus­tomers and partners.”

About Junghein­rich 

Founded in 1953, Junghein­rich ranks among the world’s lead­ing solu­tions providers for the intral­o­gis­tics sec­tor. With a com­pre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of mate­r­ial han­dling equip­ment, auto­matic sys­tems and ser­vices, Junghein­rich is able to offer cus­tomers tai­lored solu­tions for the chal­lenges posed by Indus­try 4.0. The Ham­burg-based Group is rep­re­sented world­wide in 40 coun­tries with its own direct sales com­pa­nies and in approx­i­mately 80 other coun­tries through part­ner com­pa­nies. Junghein­rich employs 18,000 peo­ple world­wide and gen­er­ated Group rev­enue of €4.07 bil­lion in 2019. The Junghein­rich share is listed on the SDAX. 

Press con­tact Junghein­rich: Benedikt Nufer, benedikt.nufer@jungheinrich.de, +49 40 6948 3489 

About the EUROPEAN INVESTMENT BANK 

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lend­ing insti­tu­tion of the Euro­pean Union owned by its Mem­ber States. It makes long-term finance avail­able for sound invest­ment in order to con­tribute towards EU pol­icy goals. 

Press con­tact EIB: Antonie Ker­wien, a.kerwien@eib.org, +352437982175 

About the Invest­ment Plan for Europe 

The Invest­ment Plan for Europe is one of the EU’s key actions to boost invest­ment in Europe, thereby cre­at­ing jobs and fos­ter­ing growth. To this end, smarter use is made of new and exist­ing finan­cial resources. The EIB Group is play­ing a vital role in this Invest­ment Plan. With guar­an­tees from the Euro­pean Fund for Strate­gic Invest­ments, the EIB and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund are able to take on a higher share of project risk, encour­ag­ing pri­vate investors to par­tic­i­pate in the projects. In July, the EIB Group exceeded its tar­get to trig­ger €500 bil­lion of addi­tional invest­ment by the end of 2020. To date, the projects and agree­ments approved under EFSI are expected to mobilise around €535 bil­lion of invest­ments and ben­e­fit around 1.4 mil­lion small and medium-sized com­pa­nies through­out the EU.