The Bay Area-based\u00a0Wonder Workshop\u00a0announced today that it has closed a $41 million Series C round of funding.\u00a0The team has built a number of very cool little robots that kids can program on their mobile phone in a manner that helps them grasp at some computer science basics.<\/p>\n
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Tencent Holdings, SoftBank Korea, TAL Education Group, MindWorks Ventures, Madrona Venture Group and VTRON Group participated in the round, alongside some of the startup\u2019s previous investors. Wonder Workshop\u00a0raised $20 million in July of 2016 and has now closed more than $78 million in funding to date, according to\u00a0Crunchbase.<\/p>\n
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There have been a handful of startups using hardware kits to let kids bring coding concepts into a more tangible setting. Wonder Workshop is unique in the way it thinks about robotics and CEO Vokas Gupta tells TechCrunch that their strategy is especially effective in ensuring that kids don\u2019t stay in instructional \u201csilos\u201d and bring others into the experience.<\/p>\n
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\u201cRobots are the natural way for multiple people to collaborate,\u201d Gupta says.<\/p>\n
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Wonder Workshop\u2019s programmable robots have been used in 12,000 elementary schools across the country. The startup has also put together its own robotics competition to teach kids STEM concepts.<\/p>\n
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With some of its new products, Wonder Workshop is looking to expand beyond instruction, from targeting 8-10-year-olds, to skills that are more engaging for pre-teens and teens.<\/p>\n
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Its latest friendly robotic coding companion,\u00a0Cue, is for ages \u201c11 and up.\u201d The $200 robot launched last month and integrates a number of sensors that users can gather data from and control responses. It can be customized with a number of different \u201cavatars\u201d that give the robot a different personality.<\/p>\n
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Gupta tells me the new funding will be used to continue expanding the \u201cglobal footprint\u201d of current products while also investing in development of future devices.<\/p>\n
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