The Seattle startup that operates robotic barista service systems called Artly, opens up a new coffee shop at 701 Dexter Ave. N. in South Lake Union in mid-August, as declared by its co-founder and chief technology officer Meng Wang. The location will run newer prototypes of the company’s robot, and Wang said Artly is developing a model roughly half the size of earlier versions.
The move comes as Artly closes its shop in the Hill7 building at 1099 Stewart Street, where it had been testing concepts on older units. Those machines have reached the end of their service life and will be upgraded before returning to use. Wang said robots may go back into Hill7 eventually, but no reopening date has been set.
The robots use mechanical arms along with computer vision and path planning to build drinks from Americanos to jasmine white mochas and silver jade matchas. Joe Yang, Artly’s chief coffee officer and the 2023 U.S. Brewers Cup champion, trained the arms to reproduce his own technique. The company says its robots have served close to 1.3 million cups since 2021.
Founded in 2020, Artly runs a shop near Pike Place Market alongside locations in Portland, San Francisco, New York, Toronto and Vancouver, and builds coffee stands for corporate clients including Microsoft, Salesforce and Tesla. Wang previously co-founded Orbeus, a cloud company Amazon acquired in 2015, and stayed on for about five years afterward. Artly raised $8 million in 2022.
