FCF Robotics Venture Capital Report - FCF Fox Corporate Finance GmbH

FCF Robotics
Venture Capital Report

The ‘FCF DeepTech Series’ is a quarterly series of reports tracking European venture capital funding trends within four main DeepTech verticals. We highlight deal counts, volumes, investor interests, subsector trends, geographic hotspots, IPO activity as well as M&A / trade sale activity. Each quarter one of the four verticals – CleanTech, Advanced Manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Robotics – is examined individually.

FCF Fox Corporate Finance GmbH is pleased to present you another report as part of its research series “FCF DeepTech Series”.

This edition of the ‘FCF DeepTech Series’ focuses on VC funding developments within the European Robotics vertical. The European Robotics vertical has been split into six main subsectors:

Commercial Robots
Consumer Robots
Drones
Industrial Robots
Medical Robots
Robotic Enablers

Key Findings:

Funding volumes continue to rise: While the number of annual VC deals has stagnated at around 300 since 2018, the total volume continues to rise, reaching a record €2.9bn in 2021. This is due to mega deals (CRM Surgical with €497m & €239m and Exotec with €295m) on the one hand and generally higher average and median deal values on the other hand
The maturity of the Robotics sector is increasing: in addition, deal types and investors are changing: While in 2017 66% of deals were early-stage deals (accelerator and seed capital) from respective investors, this share drops to 33% in H1/2022
The UK is the leading country for robotics investments: With a financing volume of €1.5bn in 2017 – H1/2022, UK is ahead of France with €1.0bn and Germany with €777 million.
The relevant sub-sectors “Medical Robots” and “Industrial Robots” attract the most capital: “Medical Robots” seem to dominate with 31% of the €4.4bn total volume of relevant VC investments from 2017 – H1 2022. However, this is due to the very high investment volumes of CMR Surgical (€859m since 2017). Adjusting for this outlier, Medical Robotics represents only c. 14% of the volume (€291m) and is overtaken by the classic segments “Industrial Robots” (€1.3bn) with the €295m mega deal from Exotec and “Robotic Enablers” (€1.0bn).
Besides the various EU vehicles, bpifrance and Plug-and-Play were the most active investors with 20 deals each, followed by SOSV (16 deals).
The largest M&A exit was made by arculus: The German company in the field of autonomous mobile robots was acquired by Jungheinrich for €102m

DEEPTECH RESEARCH SERIES

The “FCF DeepTech Series” is a quarterly series of reports tracking European venture capital funding trends within four main DeepTech verticals. We highlight deal counts, volumes, investor interests, subsector trends, geographic hotspots, IPO activity as well as M&A / trade sale activity.
Each quarter one of the four verticals – Cleantech, Advanced Manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Robotics – is examined individually.

Each report is a quick reference for investors, corporates and professionals for the funding trends within the respective vertical.