Foster City, CA and Mountain View, CA (June 21, 2017) — Konica Minolta Business Innovation Center ( BIC) announced today an exclusive multi-year servicing partnership and sizable strategic investment in Knightscope, developer of fully autonomous security robots.
Konica Minolta has been a trusted partner and investor in Knightscope since 2014. The renewed, exclusive commitment continues this strategic alignment. Konica Minolta continues to leverage its existing expertise and assets to expand robotic servicing and support, including onsite installation, maintenance and break/fix services for the Knightscope machines. The relationship, one of several Konica Minolta robotic partnerships, demonstrates the commitment Konica Minolta has towards helping scale innovative companies by servicing and support, sales, supplying components, and design consulting.
“As an early partner of Knightscope, Konica Minolta is thrilled to have supported their tremendous success by providing resources to help them scale across the United States. At the Konica Minolta Business Innovation Center, we look for promising partners like Knightscope with whom we can grow and leverage the full scale of our global expertise,” says Ekta Sahasi, vice president, Business Innovation Center, and managing director, Research and Development, Konica Minolta.
Knightscope develops fully autonomous robots that provide a commanding but friendly physical security presence. Known as Autonomous Data Machines (ADMs), the K3, K5, and future K7 use an array of sensors to gather important real-time, on-site data. The data is then processed with advanced anomaly detection software to determine and alert authorities if there is concern or threat on premise. Knightscope is deploying with 24 clients in 5 states. Clients include major malls, hospitals, corporate campuses, warehouses as well as a pharmaceutical company and a stadium.
“Konica Minolta has been a thoughtful, supportive and flexible partner – and the technicians have often gone well beyond the call of duty and demonstrated extraordinary efforts in the field while being available to us 24/7. This attitude and approach are extremely important as we scale our operations nationwide,” stated William Santana Li, chairman and CEO, Knightscope Inc.
As an engine of growth for Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. (Konica Minolta), the Business Innovation Center (BIC) is partnered with, investing in, and mentoring a diverse range of start-up businesses in Silicon Valley and beyond to bring emerging and innovative solutions into Konica Minolta’s portfolio. The BIC looks for partners that have a powerful industry-use case, high-growth market, initial traction, and proven team. Driving the disruptive transformations in the robotics industry is a strategic focus area of the BIC in North America.
A video of the Knightscope’s fully autonomous security robot in action is available here.
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About Konica Minolta Business Innovation Center (BIC)
In 2014, Konica Minolta Inc. established Business Innovation Centers in five major regions around the world (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, China and Japan) to vigorously drive transformation of its core Business Technologies business by expanding into new areas of Software and Services, creating new value to benefit and enable our customers in improving and innovating their business processes. Each BIC is focused on gaining a deeper understanding of customers’ evolving needs to develop new services while keeping an eye on industry forces and technologies that are reshaping businesses.
About Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. is reshaping and revolutionizing the Workplace of the Future. With our comprehensive portfolio, we deliver solutions to leverage mobility, cloud services, and optimize business processes with workflow automation. Our All Covered IT Services division offers a range of IT strategy, support, and network security solutions across all verticals. Konica Minolta has been recognized as the #1 Brand for Customer Loyalty in the MFP Office Copier Market by Brand Keys for ten consecutive years and is proud to be ranked on the Forbes 2016 America’s Best Employers list. Konica Minolta, Inc. has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for five years in a row. We partner with our customers to give shape to ideas and work to bring value to our society.
About Knightscope
Knightscope Inc. is an advanced security technology company that utilizes Software + Hardware + Humans to provide its clients with new groundbreaking anomaly detection capabilities. In an increasingly volatile world, we are developing one of the most important technologies to come out of Silicon Valley that will empower the public and private sectors to proactively build stronger, safer communities, ultimately saving money and lives. Crime has a $1 trillion negative economic impact on the U.S. every single year and our long-term mission is to cut it in half.
