A San Jose startup sends drones - not people - into the warehouse aisles nobody wants to staff.
In the warehouses that logistics companies struggle to staff - the ones an hour past the city limits, the ones with a night shift nobody bids on - B GARAGE has built a different kind of worker. It doesn't clock in. It doesn't need a map. It flies itself down the aisle, reads the shelf, and goes home to its own charging dock.
B GARAGE is a San Jose company that builds autonomous drones and the software behind them, aimed at one narrow but expensive problem: counting what's on a warehouse shelf. It sounds mundane until you consider the alternative - a person with a scanner gun, walking miles of aisle, in a building that may not have enough people willing to do that job at all.
The company's product, B Ware, pairs a fully autonomous drone with inventory-management software. The drone navigates warehouse aisles using onboard computer vision rather than GPS or a pre-built facility map, scans shelving and pallets, and returns to a ground station that swaps its battery automatically. The accompanying software schedules flights, visualizes the resulting inventory data, and flags discrepancies for a warehouse team to act on.
The company frames its mission simply: digitalizing warehouse data with autonomous drones. That means no pilot at the controls, no requirement to physically alter the warehouse to accommodate the technology, and no lengthy mapping process before the drones can fly.
B GARAGE's customers are B2B logistics and warehouse operators, particularly those running large distribution centers in locations where hiring enough staff for manual cycle counts is difficult. Kenco Logistics, through its Kenco Innovation Lab, completed pilot testing of the drones and has planned deployment across more than ten U.S. warehouses. Separately, B GARAGE has a planned collaboration with the Incheon Port Authority in South Korea, extending the technology from warehouse floors to port logistics.
That customer profile - operators of large, labor-strapped, often remote facilities - shapes everything about the product. It is built for scale and unattended operation, not for a single warehouse manager running an occasional audit.
Many distribution centers sit far from urban labor markets, making it hard to staff the manual, repetitive work of cycle counting inventory - especially on high racks or across sprawling floor-stacked storage.
Traditional inventory checks require workers with scanners walking aisles or operators using forklifts to reach high shelving, a process that is slow and disrupts normal warehouse operations.
Some automated inventory systems require warehouses to install fixed sensors, beacons, or extensive facility modifications before they can operate - a costly barrier to adoption.
Many drone-based competitors require a warehouse to be pre-mapped before the system can fly autonomously, delaying time to value for new customers.
B GARAGE positions its platform against rivals including Verity, Gather AI, and Corvus Robotics on four specific claims: full autonomy that covers multiple aisles in a single flight, no requirement for new warehouse infrastructure, mapping-free operation from day one, and automatic battery swapping so the drone can operate without a technician recharging it by hand.
| Capability | B GARAGE's claim |
|---|---|
| Facility mapping | Not required before flight |
| Infrastructure changes | None needed |
| Aisle coverage | Multiple aisles per flight |
| Battery management | Automatic swapping station |
| Pilot required | No |
Whether these four claims hold up as differentiators over time will depend on how competitors evolve, but they represent the specific bets B GARAGE has made about where the market's friction actually lives - not in the drone's flight itself, but in everything a customer has to do before it can take off.
B GARAGE was founded in 2017 by Aiden Kim, who holds a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University and previously worked as a software engineer at Oracle. At Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), Kim worked on AI research for robotic dogs alongside collaborators from Boston Dynamics - a background in legged robot autonomy that he later applied to aerial systems.
The company's name is a deliberate reference to Willow Garage, the influential robotics lab whose open-source software shaped a generation of robotics research before it wound down operations. It is also, by the founders' own account, a nod to the company's own modest beginnings.
B GARAGE closed a $20 million Series A round on June 29, 2023, led by LB Investment, with participation from Ignite Innovation Fund, Krossroad Partners, and existing backer SoftBank Ventures Asia. The round brought the company's total funding to roughly $26.7 million since its 2017 founding.
Aiden Kim starts the company in San Jose, California, after research in aerial and legged robot autonomy at Stanford.
B GARAGE finishes pilot testing with Kenco Innovation Lab, setting up deployment across more than ten U.S. warehouses.
LB Investment leads the round, joined by SoftBank Ventures Asia, Ignite Innovation Fund, and Krossroad Partners.
B GARAGE plans to bring its drone inventory system to port logistics operations in South Korea.
B GARAGE sits inside the growing warehouse automation and robotics-as-a-service category, alongside drone-based inventory competitors and the broader wave of logistics robotics that has drawn heavy investment since the pandemic-era supply chain disruptions. Its stated roadmap extends beyond warehouse drones into ground robots and, eventually, defense and security applications - a path that would put its autonomy technology to work well outside the original warehouse aisle.
B GARAGE builds fully autonomous drones and software that scan and track warehouse inventory without a human pilot.
Aiden Kim, a Stanford PhD graduate in aeronautics and astronautics and former Oracle software engineer, founded B GARAGE in 2017.
B GARAGE has raised approximately $26.7 million total, including a $20 million Series A round closed in June 2023.
B GARAGE works with logistics operators such as Kenco Logistics and has a planned partnership with the Incheon Port Authority in South Korea.
B GARAGE emphasizes full multi-aisle autonomy, no added warehouse infrastructure, mapping-free navigation, and automatic battery swapping.