April 10, 2023

New Innovations Will Sell Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based Commercial Robots to 100,000 Stores

New Innovations (Tokyo), a developer of artificial intelligence (AI)-based commercial robots, will launch an automated cooking robot for restaurant chains by the end of 2023. The plan is to link the new menu to a cloud system to introduce it immediately to all stores. It aims to sell to 100,000 stores in Japan and abroad within three years.

It raised approximately 2.63 billion yen through a capital increase through third-party allotment with 12 venture capitalists (VC), including SBI Investment, as underwriters, and about 2.78 billion yen through borrowing, to use for mass production.

New Innovations will develop for several major restaurant operators, including foreign-affiliated companies. They will first be provided on a trial basis to several restaurants in Japan in the fall of 2023. It features the ability to cook new menu items in response to cloud-based delivery of cooking instructions. In the future, the company will add a function that allows customers to adjust seasonings according to their preferences.

The sales price will be in the range of 5-10 million yen per unit. As human resource shortages are becoming more serious, it will capture demand by replacing simple tasks with robots and using the freed-up human resources for customer service and other activities.

New Innovations was established in 2018. It works on a "café robot" that uses AI to predict demand and automatically serves coffee. In the future, it will focus on supporting automation in the food and beverage and retail industries.