
Chef Robotics automates food manufacturing to help food companies increase production and address labor shortages. It does this by deploying AI-enabled robotic systems delivered as Robotics-as-a-Service that use ChefOS and machine learning (deep neural networks, transformers) with computer vision to handle variable food ingredients and mimic human flexibility. The company targets food manufacturing segments including prepared meals, contract manufacturing, and food service and its robots are NSF-certified for food safety and cleanability. The platform is sold as an OpEx model to avoid upfront capital expenditure and has demonstrated large-scale throughput in production deployments.

Chef Robotics automates food manufacturing to help food companies increase production and address labor shortages. It does this by deploying AI-enabled robotic systems delivered as Robotics-as-a-Service that use ChefOS and machine learning (deep neural networks, transformers) with computer vision to handle variable food ingredients and mimic human flexibility. The company targets food manufacturing segments including prepared meals, contract manufacturing, and food service and its robots are NSF-certified for food safety and cleanability. The platform is sold as an OpEx model to avoid upfront capital expenditure and has demonstrated large-scale throughput in production deployments.
What they do: AI-enabled robots and ChefOS platform to automate high-variability food assembly
Business model: Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) / OpEx subscription
Scale: Company-reported >70 million food servings produced
Funding: Raised multiple rounds, including a $43.1M financing announced Mar 31, 2025
Founded / HQ: Founded 2019; headquartered in San Francisco, CA
Food manufacturing and food-assembly automation for prepared meals, contract manufacturing, and food service.
2019
Software Development
7.7M
Combined pre-seed and seed round reported May 13, 2021.
14.75M
Announced as a $14.75M combination equity/debt round.
43.1M
Announced financing combining equity and equipment debt; equity tranche led by Avataar Venture Partners.
“Equity lead investor on latest financing: Avataar Venture Partners; participation from multiple institutional VCs and existing investors”
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About Our Team Chef Robotics is on a mission to accelerate the advent of intelligent machines in the physical world. As the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT has shown, AI has the potential to drive immense change. However, we believe AI’s biggest impact will be in the physical world, given industries like manufacturing, food, and transportation represent 90% of global GDP. We're starting with food, with a goal to put an intelligent robot in every commercial kitchen in the world. We have signed multiple multi-year contracts with various large food companies and we are growing fast. We're backed by investors like Kleiner Perkins, Construct, Bloomberg BETA and Promus Ventures. We have a great team, where you will be surrounded by talented engineers and tech leaders from companies like Cruise, Zoox, Google, Verb Surgical, Tesla, Nuro, Vicarious, Amazon Robotics, Strateos, Built Robotics, Facebook, Plenty, Yelp, and Microsoft.
Chef Robotics is seeking an Applications Engineer to serve as the vital link between our customers and our engineering teams. This role spans the full customer journey, from early technical evaluation through deployment, production ramp-up, and long-term success, driving both customer success and product excellence.If you are excited by a mix of customer engagement, hands-on robotics engineering and real-world deployment, this position offers a unique opportunity to directly shape how robotics enters large-scale food production environments. You’ll partner with customers to bring robotic systems online, drive continuous improvement and directly impact Chef’s growth and product roadmap.As a member of Chef’s Applications team, you will learn a rare blend of technical, operational and customer-facing expertise that few roles offer. Success in this position opens the door to your career growth, whether toward technical leadership, product management, field engineering, or customer success sales leadership.
The Job, Essential Duties And Responsibilities
You
Requirements
Why You’ll Love Working Here
Equal Opportunity Employer We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizen status, uniform service member and veteran status, marital status, age, pregnancy status, protected medical condition, genetic information, disability, or any other protected status.
Multiple studies have found that a higher percentage of women and BIPOC candidates won't apply if they don't meet every listed qualification. Chef values candidates of all backgrounds. If you find yourself excited by our mission but you don't check every box in the description, we encourage you to apply anyway!
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.