Aformic, which makes self-driving forklifts and carts for factories, raised a $6.95M seed round led by Veteran Ventures Capital. It says it has more than $34M in orders and plans new robots for building and maintaining AI data centres.

Industrial robotics startup Aformic has raised a $6.95M seed round led by Veteran Ventures Capital, the company said on Wednesday. ff Venture Capital, Mana Ventures, Red Beard Ventures and Alamo Angels also took part.

Based in Duncan, South Carolina, Aformic makes self-driving forklifts and carts that move parts and materials around factories and warehouses. They navigate without tape or markers on the floor, and its Qursor software plans their routes and assigns tasks.

The company was spun out of AIUT, a Polish industrial automation group, and still has an engineering and production centre in Gliwice, Poland.

Aformic says it has won more than $34M in orders and has hundreds of robots in use. Its customers include Toyota, Hitachi, 3M, Hyundai Mobis and Oshkosh Defense. Over the past year, it says, its robots drove more than 186,000 miles inside customers’ plants.

“AFORMIC was built to automate the industries that matter,” said chief executive Michal Fiuk, a US Army veteran.

The money will fund more engineers and sales staff, work on Qursor, and new robots for other jobs, including helping to build and maintain AI data centres. Data centre builders say a shortage of skilled workers is now one of their biggest bottlenecks.

Investors are backing factory robots in a big way. Earlier this week, Tutor Intelligence raised $75M from a16z for robots that customers rent by the hour, and Toyota spin-out Walden Robotics launched with $300M in July.