Simbe Robotics, a San Francisco-basd company founded in 2014 and leveraging robotics and AI to provide physical retail with insights into inventory and operations, has raised a Series A funding round. The $26 million Series A was led by Venrock with participation from Future Shape, Valo Ventures, and Activant Capital.

With the close of the Series A financing, Tony Fadell, principal at Future Shape, David Pakman, partner at Venrock; and Ryan Gembala, managing partner at Pathbreaker Ventures will be joining Simbe’s board.

In another development, Simbe is partnering with SoftBank Robotics to include inventory financing. The funds will support scaled manufacturing of an additional 1,000 units of autonomous Simbe retail robots called Tally over the coming two years, the company said in a statement.

[Image courtesy: Simbe]