€1.92m · Pre-Seed · Robotics · Stockholm, Sweden
Stockholm-based Cota Robotics, which operates robots that handle repetitive work inside retail stores, has raised €1.92m in pre-seed funding. byFounders led the round, with participation from Rethink Ventures, Icebreaker.vc and strategic angels including Fredrik Hjelm, Mattias Miksche and Kamyar Espahbodi. The company says the capital will support fleet deployments and the operational infrastructure needed to run them.
Sell stocked shelves, not robots
Cota is starting with receiving, put-away and shelf stocking, jobs that are repetitive, physically demanding and often performed outside peak shopping hours. Its robots are designed to work in existing store layouts without a retrofit. The company marks receiving, put-away and stocking as live today, while inbound verification, sorting and pick-and-pack remain in development.
The commercial model is more important than the machine. Cota sells completed work as a recurring, hourly service and keeps responsibility for the fleet, according to byFounders. That lets a retailer buy an operating outcome rather than choose hardware, build robotics expertise and manage deployments itself. Cota can also swap in better machines as the hardware market evolves, concentrating its own advantage in store integrations, teleoperation, fleet logistics and the data generated by repeated shifts.
That structure turns deployment density into a potential flywheel. More robots working across stores can spread control-room and maintenance costs, while each shift adds operational data. Cota says its robots rebuild stores as 3D digital twins and can capture stock, pricing and planogram information as they move. If that data improves task planning and uptime, the service could become more valuable than a narrow labour-replacement pitch.
Operations is the product
byFounders says paid pilots have begun, so the next test is whether Cota can convert demonstrations into dependable multi-store operations. Retail customers will judge the service on shelves being ready, not on robotics benchmarks. That makes uptime, exception handling and safe work alongside staff central to retention and gross margin.
Co-founders Teo Rizvanovic and Kildo Alias previously built drone-delivery company Aerit together. byFounders says that experience shaped a more pragmatic approach to sequencing technology, unit economics and customer deployment. The funding therefore backs both technical progress and an operations system: Cota must prove that people, teleoperation and logistics can become more efficient as the installed fleet grows, rather than expanding in lockstep with every new robot.
