distribution-centers
(3)The $4.5 Billion HVAC Empire Two Guys Named Johnson and Stone Never Saw Coming
It started as one refrigeration shop in Portland with a name stitched from its two founders. Seventy years later it moves heat pumps, compressors and thermostats through 450-plus branches - and the contractors who buy from it once owned the whole thing.
GreyOrange
GreyOrange is a warehouse-automation company that builds AI software and mobile robots to run fulfillment operations for retailers, distributors and 3PLs. Its GreyMatter fulfillment operating system continuously optimizes decisions across a distribution center, orchestrating fleets of Ranger mobile robots, people and existing equipment to move goods, pick orders and manage inventory. Founded in India in 2011 and now headquartered in Atlanta, the company sells its technology outright or as a monthly robotics-as-a-service subscription, and has raised more than half a billion dollars from investors including Mithril Capital, Tiger Global and Blackstone-adjacent funds.
Pickle Robot Company
Pickle Robot Company builds Physical AI systems that autonomously unload trucks, trailers, and import containers of non-palletized goods at human-scale or better. Founded in 2018 and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Pickle pairs a multi-camera vision system with generative AI foundation models trained on millions of real warehouse data points, mounting a KUKA arm on a custom mobile base that drives into a trailer and clears it in roughly 90 minutes. The company is on a mission to automate inbound and outbound work at one million warehouse doors over the next decade.