Foresight Group invests £1.45 million into collaborative robotics developer Inovo

Foresight Group, a leading independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager, and Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) have announced a £1.45 million follow-on investment from Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund into Inovo Robotics.  This investment will allow the company to grow sales internationally and bring the total investment to £2.95 million.

Inovo was founded in 2016 by Henry Wood and Jonathan Cheung, both former senior engineers at defence technology company, Northrup Grumman.  The Company is developing a competitively priced “cobot”, a collaborative robot designed to operate safely within a human work environment and intended to assist people with repetitive tasks.  It offers manufacturing and logistics companies that perform batch processes a more cost-effective solution.  Rather than having to purchase multiple robots for individual tasks, the modular design means its cobot can be easily adapted to optimise the balance between reach and payload.  Moreover, it’s simple and easy-to-use software allows even a non-specialist user to re-program the cobot quickly for a new task.

Commenting on the investment, Andrew Bloxam, Senior Investment Manager at Foresight, said: “It has been a pleasure to see Inovo bring its product to market since our initial investment in late 2018.  Now, with strong interest from customers and the need for automation solutions like cobots growing rapidly, we are delighted to invest again and support the company as it scales up.”

Henry Wood, Co-founder, Inovo Robotics said: “ Closing this second round of investment is testament to the strong relationship with FWT and a deep shared belief in the scale of the market opportunity”.