This is exchanges at Golden Sachs. I'm Heath Terry of Golden Sachs research.

Welcome to another episode of our Venture Capital Horizon series,

where we use the lens of venture capital

to identify emerging technologies,

business models, and entrepreneurs.

In our last episode, we looked at clean energy and the advances in

sustainable nuclear power. In this episode we're going to dive into the future of

e-commerce and the adoption of robotics in everything from manufacturing to packaging and delivery.

It's no surprise given the current challenges of coronavirus, people are buying online more than ever.

Growth of e-commerce has skyrocketed from 18% in February to 93% in May.

Looking ahead as social distancing and safety concerns remain in place,

we may be approaching a holiday season where crowded malls and

fitting rooms are a thing of the past.

While Amazon, with roughly 40% sharing e-commerce is dominating the space, it's clear their

fulfillment capacity has been stretched beyond its limits.

Over the past few months, we saw Amazon holding back shipments of non-essential items and

trying to hire more than 100,000 new workers, something made even more difficult by the need to

socially distance in warehouses. But new generations of affordable advanced

commercial robots are helping to solve for that. According to market research from ABI research,

more than 50,000 warehouses worldwide

will include commercial robotics by 2025,

something that's only going to be accelerated

...