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Meet 'Alfred,' a QSR robot that fits existing kitchens, recipes

Dexai's "Alfred" robot fits into existing restaurant kitchens and uses current brand recipes. (Photo provided)

March 5, 2020

There's a new player in the robotic kitchen market and it not only has a lot of hefty flexible arms, but just got a nice hunk of cash according to its maker, Dexai Robotics. The company said today that it has raised an oversubscribed $5.5 million Seed Round, led by Hyperplane Venture Capital, according to a news release. 

New investors Rho Capital, Harlem Capital, Contour Venture Partners and NextView Ventures also participated in this financing round, and Hyperplane Managing Partner Vivjan Myrto joined Dexai's board. The company will use the funding to expand its engineering, sales and product teams to grow the machines' abilities to serve new cuisines while expanding its foodservice presence.

Dexai was born out of a collaboration around artificial intelligence for robotics among researchers at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, MIT and Harvard. This work — led by Dexai co-founder and CEO David MS Johnson — resulted in software innovations that enabled robots to control, for the first time, so-called "deformable" materials like those common in restaurant kitchens like ice cream, sushi-grade tuna, pico de gallo and more. 

"We founded Dexai to address the 150,000-person labor shortage in the restaurant industry so that restaurants can focus on hospitality and, by robots handling repetitive tasks, workforce satisfaction," Dexai co-founder and CFO Anthony Tayoun said in the release. 

The company has dubbed the kitchen sous-chef robot "Alfred," and said that the machine works in existing kitchens to create fast, affordable restaurant meals.  

"Alfred can be dropped into existing kitchens because its artificial intelligence software recognizes its surroundings and adapts to the task at hand," said CEO Johnson. "Because Alfred uses standard utensils, it can make ice cream sundaes for one customer, quinoa bowls for another, and poke for a third. We're teaching robots how to 'see' and identify different objects and foodstuff, and prepare the delicious recipes that people already know and enjoy."

Dexai automates activities in commercial kitchens, using flexible robot arms, as a plug-and-play solution for QSRs that can prep salads, bowls and other dishes without changing a location's kitchen layout or recipes.