Menlo Ventures
Assembly Line
Squint Raises $6M in Funding from Sequoia Capital and Menlo Ventures to Expand AR-Powered Technology Platform
Squint, the technology platform that uses augmented reality (AR) to optimize factory procedures and empower operators, today announced $6 million in combined seed and pre-seed funding from Arc, Sequoia Capital’s pre-seed and seed-stage catalyst, and Menlo Ventures’ venture studio Menlo Labs, along with several angel investors.
Squint uses AR to power an intuitive mobile platform for factory operators who need dynamic, contextual help mapped to the world around them. The Squint platform brings the shop floor binder – full of instructions – to life, providing operators with an interactive experience that is both engaging and effective, while increasing learning speed and knowledge retention. With these capabilities, Squint enables organizations to digitize standard operating procedures using just a mobile phone, with no hassle — not even an IT team – making everyday tasks like training, operation, and maintenance faster and safer.
Squint’s roster of customers, including global brands like Siemens and The Volvo Group, speaks to the value of their solution. Early customers report an 86% decrease in training time for new operators. Rachel Wood, the Learning & Development Site Lead at Siemens Spartanburg, explains, “We see Squint completely transforming our training process on the factory floor. It enables our workforce to learn with immersive spatial guides that boost productivity and, most importantly, encourage safety.”
RightHand Robotics raises $23 million from Menlo Ventures, Google
With its reinforced bank account, Somerville, Mass.-based RightHand plans to expand its business and technical teams and broaden its suite of product applications, the firm said. “The funds will be used to support our growth and in hiring people as fast as we effectively can,” Martinelli said. “We’re getting follow-on orders and we need to support those orders and extend the product line, both for projects in the U.S. and in Europe and Japan.”