Startup Gather AI offers warehouses drone powered inferred case count and location occupancy capabilities

Gather AI, a specialist in computer vision-based AI for warehouse inventory monitoring, has announced two new capabilities - inferred case counting and location occupancy.

With its solution, warehouses can scan up to 900 pallets per hour.

Drones take pictures of each location. The AI analyses the pictures, reading multiple barcodes and text and detecting empty locations.

With this latest release, the solution will show inferred case counts for full and partial pallets and location occupancy percentages on the customer web dashboard, reducing the time and labour of verifying case counts.

It will also help warehouses find space to consolidate inventory, avoiding honeycombing.

"Several customers require us to count cases as part of our cycle counting programme," says AJ Raaker, Director Of Warehouse Development at Taylor Logistics, a third-party logistics provider.

"Using Gather AI's drone inventory monitoring and the inferred case count feature is 87% more efficient than having our team do physical cycle counting. The efficiency gain enables our team to prioritise revenue generating direct labour activities."

Gather AI CEO and Co-Founder Sankalp Arora, says, “Our mission is to bring unprecedented real-time inventory insights to warehouse operators. Our computer vision and AI analyse inventory images offering warehouse operators access to a richer source of information than barcodes.”

“Our new inferred case counting and location occupancy capabilities push the art of what’s possible while solving for error prone, labour intensive tasks for our customers.”

Funding news

Last month, Gather AI announced a $17 million Series A-1 round led by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Tribeca Venture Partners, Dundee Venture Capital, Expa, and Bling Capital.

This provided a total of $34 million raised to date. The cash will be invested in scaling operations.

Gather AI was founded in 2017 by Sankalp Arora, Daniel Maturana and Geetesh Dubey, after launching from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.

Customers include NFI, GEODIS, DSV, Barrett Distribution, and DPI Specialty Foods (KeHE).

“Gather AI’s cutting-edge computer vision and workflow software, purpose built for inventory monitoring, has seen significant commercial adoption and rapid growth separating them from the field of other venture backed startups,” said Ajay Agarwal, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures.

“We are excited to welcome Gather AI to our portfolio of companies such as Kiva, ShipBob, FourKites, and Vention that are leveraging AI and software in the physical world.”