Amazon picked Khosla-backed Fulfil's robots for a Whole Foods micro-warehouse pilot

Robotic micro-fulfillment systems for grocers and retailers: automated warehouses that pick, pack and hand off orders at store-adjacent scale.

That grocery retail wants robotic warehouses bolted onto stores — enough that the world's most automation-hungry retailer would adopt a startup's system over its own.

$60 million raised at stealth exit in February 2023, led by Eclipse Ventures with participation from Khosla Ventures and DCVC.

Fulfil, a San Francisco startup led by CEO Mir Aamir, came out of stealth in February 2023 with robotic systems for grocers and other retailers; it tested with California retailer Lucky, owned by regional grocer Save Mart and itself an Amazon grocery delivery partner.

In October 2024 Amazon began piloting a micro-fulfillment center bolted onto a Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, with Fulfil job postings seeking engineers and factory operators there. A video shown at a Nashville press event by Anand Varadarajan, who leads product and tech for Amazon's worldwide grocery business, showed robots pulling trays of soy sauce, canned pineapple and coffee pods and handing them to robots with grocery bags — footage matching the demo on Fulfil's own site. Neither company would confirm the partnership.

Whole Foods' 'No List' bans hundreds of ingredients, making everyday brands literally unpurchasable in its stores.

The average American shops two grocery stores per week, per Drive Research — each extra trip is a chance Amazon wants to capture.

Physical-stores sales growth stuck in single digits for seven quarters gave Amazon's grocery unit a mandate to try store-attached automation.

Fulfil's system had already run with Lucky, a Save Mart grocer and Amazon delivery partner, lowering the risk of adoption.

The strongest validation for vertical robotics is the customer with the most to gain from automating — even if neither side will say so publicly.

Amazon expected the Plymouth Meeting facility to become operational within a year, per worldwide grocery chief Tony Hoggett, with pickup integrated into store checkouts; both Amazon and Fulfil declined to confirm the use of Fulfil's technology.