Q-Bot secures £1.6m of investment to accelerate sales of its ‘Robot as a Service’ offering to retrofit millions of homes in the UK and internationally

14 June 2022

 

Q-Bot, the UK’s leading developer of robots for use in the construction and retrofit industry, has successfully closed a £1.6m investment round to fund the next stage of its growth, primarily from existing investors. The additional funds will allow Q-Bot to accelerate the rollout of its unique solution of remotely applying underfloor insulation across the UK and engage with growing overseas demand for Q-Bot’s solution. Deeptech VC specialist EMV Capital led the round, with participation of their parent company NetScientific PLC.

Using robotics and AI, Q-Bot develops innovative solutions that can survey, maintain, and upgrade existing buildings. Q-Bot created intelligent robots to apply underfloor insulation underneath suspended floors. This unique method improves the energy efficiency of properties and households’ comfort with minimal disruption to their daily life. Q-Bot’s solution is critically important in helping UK and other nations’ households face the unprecedented rise of heating cost for this winter. Retrofitting a suspended floor has many benefits: it saves money on energy bills, improves daily comfort, reduces carbon footprint, and increases the value of a property. This also means a healthier and warmer home to live in, contributing to tackling fuel poverty and working towards net zero carbon.

With this funding, Q-Bot will continue its rapid growth to meet the increasing demand for its offering in the UK and overseas. As the UK’s de facto leader in construction and retrofit robotics, Q-Bot works with both social and private landlords, as well as homeowners, having now insulated more than 3,000 properties.

Q-Bot’s growth is through an expansion of its network of Accredited Installation Partners, industrialising robot manufacturing at scale. The company offers a ‘Robot as a Service’, a scalable model, to locally successful, high quality Accredited Installation Partners. There are tens of millions of homes worldwide that need Q-Bot’s underfloor insulation robots. Collaborative and creative partnering is crucial to delivery at scale. Over the past two years, Q-Bot has successfully developed several partnerships in the UK, with additional partners going through training. Since October 2021, Q-Bot is working overseas, and has partnered with a large national insulation company and a local installer in France. This is a major achievement for the company, opening its service to even more properties in need of underfloor insulation that would be impossible otherwise to insulate and meet retrofit energy standards.

“We are pleased that following the strategy review and changes to the company launched by the Board in 2021, we are now seeing accelerated growth for the business in terms of sales, the on-boarding of a series of key partners and continued investor support. We recognise the challenges associated with rising energy bills and are fortunate to be part of worthwhile solutions to reducing energy demands and associated emissions and costs. We are looking forward to being able to offer our quality assured underfloor thermal insulation to even more homes in the coming year.” – Peter Childs FREng, Chair Q-Bot Ltd and Professor, Imperial College London

Dr. Ilian Iliev, Managing Director of EMV Capital said: “Q-Bot’s robotics as a service offering is at the right place and right time, providing a massively scalable solution not only to the transition to a low-carbon economy, but to the current crisis in growing households energy bills and energy security. We’re pleased also with growing international interest in the technology, which can see a further step-change in growth in future years.”