Logibot bags €1.4M to build a ‘temp agency for robots’
Tech.eu Cate Lawrence
Belgian startup Logibot raised €1.4M to run warehouses with robots like temps. It wants to cut labour pain without locking clients to one robot supplier.
Based on reporting by Tech.eu, Cate Lawrence — read the original for the full story.
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Logibot, a Belgian software platform for logistics robots, has raised €1.4 million. BeamBerlin, the startup studio tied to German family group BEUMER, led the round. RDY Ventures, PMV and BAN Business Angels also joined in.
The pitch lands in a sector that is clearly under strain. Warehouses across Europe struggle to fill physically demanding jobs, especially in sorting and distribution centres that are often far from where workers live. Temp labour can cost up to 40% more than a permanent hire, turnover remains high, and the training churn keeps eating into operating costs. Meanwhile, about 2.5 million people in European logistics still do manual groundwork.
Logibot’s answer is to keep the hardware simple and put the intelligence on top. The company supplies the hardware and builds software that can choose, train and steer about 95% of the hardware on the market. A robot arm, for example, can be enough for many warehouse tasks. The idea is not to force a big transformation. It is to slot into what is already there.
That software layer stretches from analysing current flows and spotting automation opportunities, to testing everything in a digital twin before deployment, to training the robots for a specific task and running them in live operations. Remote teleoperation and continuous monitoring are part of the package too. Multiple cameras are calibrated for each application, and if a hardware maker disappears or no longer fits the job, the software keeps running. That is the real sell: no supplier lock-in.
CEO and co-founder Louis Verspreeuwen says logistics directors usually hit the same four walls when they try to robotise: they do not know where to begin, they do not want a single supplier dictating terms, they want solutions that fit existing operations, and they want predictable variable costs without heavy capital spending. Logibot now has seven employees. Verspreeuwen brings 12 years in logistics and international trade, including work in China and Hong Kong, while CTO Salimzhan Gafurov has two PhDs in robotics and AI and previously led a team of 110 robotics engineers at a major e-commerce player.
The early customer list already includes logistics providers with 8,000 to 21,000 employees, plus one of the largest logistics and postal groups in the Nordics. A robot is already running in Denmark. The new money will help put the first robots into client sites and finish assembling a second robot, with its sensors being mounted in Zellik, in Flemish Brabant.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the rare robotics pitch that sounds built by people who’ve actually seen a warehouse. The “temp agency for robots” line is cheeky, but the bigger point is boring in the best way: companies want flexibility, not a shrine to one vendor. In European industrial tech, that usually beats grand AI theatre by a mile.
Read more about this at: Tech.eu
