Dmitry Grishin, the CEO of Mail.ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet group, announced on Friday the launch of a New York City-based investment fund dedicated to robotics startups.
The fund, named Grishin Robotics, intends to inject $25 million into 10 to 20 early stage or middle-size companies developing robots in the fields of home maintenance, education, healthcare, entertainment, and transportation.
Grishin is the sole investor in the fund. “He will personally considers each prospective opportunity, supported by a team of professionals,” according to the fund’s corporate website.
“Our planet has not seen revolutionary breakthroughs in the offline world for many years,” Grishin Robotics states. “The robotics industry is uniquely positioned to leverage recent innovations made in software, Internet and smartphones and combine them to make a tremendous global impact. We are at the start of a transformative period for robotics that requires a new breed of risk-takers to drive mass-market adoption.”
“A major problem in robotics was cost,” said Grishin in an interview with IEEE Spectrum. “A decade or two ago, a cool robot cost 100k to a million dollars. Now two things are about to change that. One is that processors, memory, cameras, displays, and batteries are getting better and cheaper very fast. The other thing is that, thanks to outsourcing, manufacturing of high-tech products is also getting easier and cheaper. It’s the Apple model: designed in California, assembled in China. So now cost shouldn’t be the major obstacle. What you need is to find the good applications. This is where I want to apply my knowledge about mass markets, product developing, and funding.”
