UNIT AI raises $12M from Prologis Ventures and sennder-backer Dynamo to modularise warehouse automation — TFN

• UNIT AI has raised $12 million in funding co-led by Dynamo Ventures, alongside Prologis Ventures and Ground Up Ventures.

• Second-time founder Guy Glass sold Caja Robotics to Fives Group in 2025 before founding UNIT AI.

• UNIT aims to make enterprise-grade warehouse automation affordable for retailers and 3PLs without requiring costly warehouse redesigns.

Guy Glass already built one warehouse robotics company and sold it to an industrial giant. Now he has raised $12 million to build a second one, aimed at the retailers who could never have afforded the first.

UNIT AI, a Boston-based physical AI company, has raised $12 million co-led by Prologis Ventures, Dynamo Ventures, and Ground Up Ventures, with eGateway Capital, Recursive Ventures, Think + Ventures, ZEP Fund, and Crosscourt also participating.

Glass founded UNIT AI with Avihou Barkay, formerly president of Plus One Robotics and general manager at Caja Robotics, the goods-to-person warehouse automation company Glass co-founded in 2014, which Fives Group acquired in 2025. 

The Caja deal put advanced warehouse robotics in the hands of an industrial engineering group with over 200 years of history. UNIT AI is built for the other end of the market: retailers and third-party logistics (3PL) providers that never had the capital for that tier of automation.

Automation without the facility rebuild

UNIT AI’s Physical AI platform automates each-level inventory management, order fulfilment, and returns across North America. Where a traditional warehouse robotics project typically forces an operator to redesign an entire facility, 

UNIT AI says its modular system installs in spaces as small as 1,000 square feet without ripping out existing shelving or flooring, and delivers a return on investment within 12 months.

22 months in, UNIT AI counts Barrett, ShipCalm, DaVinci, and Carter among its customers, alongside global apparel brands and a pipeline of retailers and logistics providers it says collectively ship billions of inventory units a year.

It joins a crowded field, though not always the same corner of it. London-based PHINXT Robotics raised over £600,000 chasing the same gap in Europe, with fewer than 10% of warehouses can currently afford robotic automation, and both companies are betting that gap, not the top end of the market, is where the next wave of customers sits. 

Elsewhere, the money is still flowing toward bigger systems: Dexory closed a $100 million Series C in October 2025 for its robot-driven warehouse data platform, Smart Robotics raised funding for its pick-and-place platform, and Agility Robotics went public at a $2.5 billion valuation on the strength of humanoids already working warehouse floors. 

Brightpick has raised $12 million for autonomous mobile robots, Dexterity has raised $95 million to scale AI-powered picking robots, and RightHand Robotics has taken in more than $100 million from GV, Menlo Ventures, and Playground Global.

Why a warehouse landlord is investing

The round leans on investor pedigree as much as on product claims. Prologis Ventures is the venture arm of Prologis, the industrial real estate group that owns and leases warehouse space to many of the retailers UNIT AI is trying to reach, making it a strategic backer with a direct line to potential customers rather than a purely financial one. 

Dynamo Ventures was an early backer of sennder, the digital freight brokerage that reached a $1.45 billion valuation in 2021, its first unicorn, giving the firm a track record of turning early industrial-economy bets into scaled outcomes.

“After decades of building warehouse automation, we realised the next breakthrough wasn’t building bigger systems — it was making automation dramatically more accessible,” says Guy Glass, founder of UNIT AI.

“Retailers and 3PLs need automation that solves real operational pain points without forcing a full facility redesign. UNIT AI’s modular platform gives operators flexible automation that can scale alongside changing customer demands,” adds Todd Lewis, senior vice president at Prologis Ventures. 

UNIT AI says the new capital will expand its deployment capacity, accelerate product development, and support commercial growth as it scales further across North America. Neither the company’s total funding to date nor a valuation was disclosed.

According to Grand View Research, the global warehouse automation market was valued at $23.29 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $54.57 billion by 2030, driven by e-commerce growth, labour shortages, and AI-powered fulfilment.

Whether “automation for every retailer” beats “automation for the largest 10” comes down to unit economics that no modular player, UNIT AI or PHINXT included, has proven yet at scale. The next test is whether it still pays for itself once the pilot warehouse is no longer the only one running it.