The robots are mesmerizing. Inside a warehouse in Erith, on the outskirts of East London, more than a thousand of them glide across a vast steel and aluminum grid. Each is the size and shape of an office copy machine, topped with stubby antennae and a shining neon-green LED. Following individual routes, they whiz off, accelerating at rates rivaling those of a Ferrari. They stop on a dime, reverse, shoot left or right, or momentarily pause to allow fellow robots to pass—a meticulously choreographed electric ballet.
造访Ocdoad的公司当中也包括英国连锁超市莫里森，其收入远远超过Ocado，但没有电商业务。两家公司达成协议，将Ocado最新分拣中心一半产能出售给莫里森，Ocado还帮莫里森管理设施和送货车队。2014年1月莫里森网店Morrisons.com开业，证明了Ocado的平台可用于其他公司。
The frequency of Ocado’s fundraising has made some analysts uneasy. But Steiner, the CEO, says the efforts are a sign of strength, not weakness. “The only reason to do a capital raise is because you think you are going to do more [business],” he says. And in February, the world’s most prominent investor offered an indirect vote of confidence in Ocado’s strategy: Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed in government filings that it had spent almost $550 million to buy a 2.3% stake in Kroger.
Clarke, who by then had been promoted to chief technology officer, had an even more ambitious version of that platform in mind. The day after Ocado launched Morrisons, Clarke gathered his staff for an off-site in a local hotel. He congratulated them on having gotten Morrisons up and running on schedule and in just six months—a significant technical achievement. What he said next made many in the room gasp. “We’re going to rewrite the whole technology stack from scratch,” he told them. At first, this largely meant software improvements. But, by mid-2015, Ocado had begun developing the army of robots that would eventually staff its “hives.”
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Robots aren’t the only topic on Clarke’s mind. Ocado has made multiple investments in “vertical” farming—indoor experiments in sustainable agriculture. It bought a majority stake in Jones Foods, Europe’s largest vertical farming company, and has put money into a joint venture called Infinite Acres along with a U.S. startup called 80 Acres Urban Agriculture and Dutch company Priva Holdings. Another investment is Karakuri, a British startup creating automated kitchens that can prepare restaurant-style meals for delivery. Clarke says Ocado envisions building an “integrated food machine.” By combining vertical farming, food prep, and delivery in one facility, he explains, “you might be able to go from plant to kitchen table in two hours or less.”
本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志2020年5月刊，标题为《新冠疫情前线上的杂货机器人》。
当时克拉克已擢升为首席技术官，他对平台的构想更加雄心勃勃。Ocado推出莫里森网店的第二天，克拉克在当地一家酒店召集员工开会。他首先祝贺短短六个月内就让莫里森网站如期投入运营，这是重大的技术成就。但他接下来的话让很多人倒吸一口冷气。“整个技术堆栈要重写。”他告诉员工。刚开始，重写主要意味着软件改进。但到2015年中，Ocado已经开始研发大批机器人，在“蜂巢”里忙碌。
Ocado, which had no stores, took a different approach. It built an automated central distribution center in Hatfield, on London’s northern edge, and delivered all its orders from there—a strategy that helped it minimize inventory shortfalls. The business quickly became popular, consistently topping consumer surveys. Its rate of substituted or erroneous items in orders—which it drove down below 0.5%—was much better than those of its rivals.
多年来，Ocado转型技术平台的说法似乎停留在口头上。股票分析师普遍怀疑，该股也是长期以来卖空者的最爱。但Ocado的物流能力逐渐获得了认可。从2017年开始，公司跟四大洲多家食品连锁店达成一系列许可协议，包括跟克罗格达成巨额合作协议。此后，Ocado的市值翻了两番超过100亿美元，每年收入增长约10%，2019年达到22亿美元。对科技公司来说如此慢的增速毫无意义，但对杂货店来说已相当可观。
It all may sound like a stretch for a company whose core grocery business is still fighting to prove its staying power. But for those who wonder why Ocado would want to expand into parking or port operations, Steiner has a ready answer: What if Amazon had simply stopped with books?
In the summer of 2010, Ocado went public on the London Stock Exchange, in a listing that valued the company at 937 million pounds ($1.4 billion at the time). That was more than many analysts thought the money-losing grocer was worth, and its shares fell 10% on their first day of trading. That skepticism would continue to haunt Ocado: Over the next decade, its shares would frequently have the dubious distinction of the being among the market’s most shorted, a Greek chorus of hedge fund managers cheering for its failure.
不过接下来的一年里，Ocado实现第一次实现营业利润。大约在同一时间，食品杂货咨询公司、投资银行，后来连宝洁、联合利华、雀巢和可口可乐等巨头也开始低调要求参观分拣中心。斯坦纳的本能反应是拒绝。“当时我们很保密。”他回忆说。但他很快意识到，虽然其他公司参观分拣中心可能会学到一些技巧，但Ocado十多年里搭建集成软件、硬件、仓库工人和送货流程的系统其实无法复制。2012年的年报中，Ocado首次提出将知识产权货币化制定为战略方针。
亚马逊和沃尔玛对机器人技术并不陌生，2012年亚马逊以7.75亿美元收购马萨诸塞州Kiva公司后，已开始使用Roomba型机器人，在分拣中心运送大堆货物。去年，亚马逊还收购了科罗拉多州博尔德市的初创公司Canvas，利用该公司的计算机视觉系统，仓库机器人可以在拥挤的环境中跟人类共同工作。沃尔玛则从匹兹堡的Bossa Nova Robotics订购了数千台机器人，用来跟踪门店库存。沃尔玛还在新罕布什尔州试点了全自动化仓库，为用户在线下单线下自提业务提供支持。
Ocado像大多数杂货店一样，因社交隔离措施和恐慌性购买推动的出现需求飙升。3月该公司在英国的杂货销售额同比增长了20%以上。公司网站的访问量一度达到正常水平的100倍，高到公司的网络安全系统判断网站受到攻击。“这是我们有史以来流量最高峰。”Ocado集团传播总监大卫·施赖弗表示。
Amazon and Walmart are no strangers to robotics. Amazon has begun using Roomba-like robots from Kiva, a Massachusetts company it acquired in 2012 for $775 million, to move large stacks of pallets around its fulfillment centers. Last year, it also acquired Canvas, a Boulder, Colo., startup whose computer vision systems allow the warehouse robots it builds to work in crowded conditions alongside people. Walmart has deployed thousands of robots from Bossa Nova Robotics, a Pittsburgh company, to keep track of stock in its stores. It has also created a pilot, fully automated warehouse in New Hampshire that serves its order-online-and-customer-pickup grocery business.
尽管如此，Ocado跟其他同行一样，满足需求也不太顺利。为了应对铺天盖地的订单，Ocado关闭了其移动应用程序，还在网站上增加了排队系统。但需求实在太多，3月中旬Ocado一星期里的送货时间全被预订，被迫临时关闭网站。近一周后重新上线时，原有用户下单都受到限制，然而限制后还是很难及时送货。而且，Ocado跟许多杂货店一样，临时限制每件商品只能买两到三件，以阻止囤货。
跟强手达成战略伙伴关系有利于公司发展。Ocado发现自身规模很小，很难跟批发商谈到合适的价格，于是与高档英国连锁超市Waitrose签订协议，之后Ocado可参照其合作方式跟供应商交易。作为交换，Ocado同意接下来10年售卖带有Waitrose白色标志的产品（后来协议延长了10年）。Waitrose的百货商店母公司约翰·刘易斯曾投资4500万美元收购其40%的股份。
Ocado’s robot-powered warehouses thrum with activity on ordinary days; since the coronavirus crisis erupted, they’ve been in roaring overdrive. The pandemic has given the company a chance to prove it can keep an online grocery business humming, even when its human workforce faces unprecedented strain. Yet at the same time, the crisis’s upending of daily life has threatened to knock Ocado off its growth trajectory, just when it seemed tantalizingly close to becoming a global force.