The company revealed the plans at its Delivering the Future event in Dartford, England, where it also introduced an upgraded version of Proteus, its autonomous warehouse robot.

The new Proteus can move across warehouse floors rather than being limited to loading and dock areas. Amazon said employees can now give the robot instructions using everyday language instead of technical commands.

“You tell it what needs to be done. It figures out the priority, the route, the timing,” said Scott Dresser, vice president of Amazon Robotics.

Like the current version, Proteus is designed to handle physically demanding work, including moving heavy carts over long distances. Amazon explained that the upgraded robot is being tested in its laboratories and is expected to begin operating in Europe during the first half of 2027.

Alongside Proteus, Amazon also highlighted other robotics technologies that it plans to expand across its European network. These include Vulcan, the company’s first robot with a sense of touch, and STARK, a robotic tote-handling system that works alongside employees by picking full totes from conveyors and placing them onto carts.

STARK was first tested in Barcelona and Amazon plans to deploy it at 15 sites across Europe by 2027.

The warehouse robots rollout is part of an investment programme worth more than €10 billion, Amazon said the funding will be used to expand and modernise fulfilment centres across Europe while supporting long-term growth in the region.

The company expects the expansion to create 25,000 additional jobs across its European fulfilment network over the coming years.

Amazon also announced a fresh commitment to workforce development, pledging $1 billion to its Career Choice programme by 2030. The initiative funds education and training for employees seeking careers in areas such as cyber security, software development, logistics, renewable energy and mechatronics.

More than 300,000 employees have participated in the programme globally, including 30,000 in the United Kingdom.

On the delivery side, Amazon said it will open more than 25 Sub Same-Day Delivery sites across Europe this year. The facilities bring storage, fulfilment and final delivery operations together in one location, allowing customers to place orders later in the day and still receive them within hours.

The company said the network will expand to locations including Coventry in the UK and Nürnberg in Germany.

Amazon Now, the retailer’s ultra-fast delivery service for groceries and household essentials, is also set for further growth. The service, which promises delivery in 30 minutes or less, is already available in parts of London and will expand to Manchester and Birmingham later this year.

In another update for European customers, Amazon said its Add to Delivery feature will launch in the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and France later this year. The service allows Prime members to add items to an existing order without completing a separate checkout process or paying extra delivery charges.

The company is also strengthening its grocery offering. Customers in parts of central and east London can now combine fresh food items, including fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy products, with other Amazon purchases for same-day delivery.

Amazon said the investment drive follows a record year in Europe. The company invested more than €60 billion across the region in 2025, its largest annual investment in Europe to date.

The retailer also provided an update on its sustainability efforts, revealing that more than 50,000 electric delivery vans are now operating across the United States, Europe and India. That figure represents half of Amazon’s target to deploy 100,000 electric vans globally by 2030.

In Europe, Amazon and its delivery partners have now completed more than 100 million deliveries using electric cargo bikes, electric mopeds and on-foot delivery methods. These deliveries have helped avoid more than 17,000 metric tonnes of carbon emissions.

This initial funding will accelerate the development and deployment of its solutions for the logistics and warehousing industry. 

The seed round was supported by a multitude of investors, including 1Sharpe, GTMFund, 9Yards, Chingona Ventures, and the Bond Fund.

LuminX addresses critical inefficiencies in supply chain and warehouse management that lead to significant operational costs and errors. 

The company is at the forefront of solving these issues by developing and deploying its Vision Language Models (VLMs) directly onto low-cost mobile hardware within the warehouse – an approach that makes advanced AI accessible and practical for a wider range of operations.

LuminX systems uniquely integrate sophisticated visual understanding with powerful generative AI capabilities, enabling its cameras to ‘see’ and interpret complex, dynamic warehouse environments in real-time, recognising products, varied labels, assessing package conditions, and tracking movement. 

These versatile devices can be deployed anywhere in the warehouse, including docks, conveyors, on forklifts, or as handheld units. LuminX’s system intelligently processes this visual information to automate intricate operational tasks, eliminate manual work, and provide actionable data for drastically reducing discrepancies and optimising overall workflow.

LuminX is led by founder and CEO Alex Kaveh Senemar, a seasoned entrepreneur with a proven track record of building and scaling successful AI companies across several industries. 

He previously founded and led Voxel, a pioneering AI company in warehouse safety and operations, and prior to that, founded Sherbit, which was successfully acquired by Huma in 2019. 

He is joined by co-founder & CTO Reza (Mamrez) Javanmardi, Ph.D. in Computer Science and former Head of AI Research at Voxel, whose career spans impactful R&D in machine learning and computer vision across startups and research institutions. 

The LuminX team brings a wealth of knowledge and deep expertise in AI, specifically in Vision Language Models, computer vision, and robotics, with many members having ties to leading research institutions like Carnegie Mellon University. 

The team’s established track record and vision have garnered strong support. Significant participation in the funding round also came from previous investors in Voxel and customers, underscoring deep confidence in LuminX’s advanced technological approach.

“This pivotal funding allows us to scale our next-generation AI models, transforming how warehouses operate,” said Alex Kaveh Senemar.

“Our edge based vision language models represent a massive step forward, acting as an intelligent core for warehouse operations. They deliver new levels of automation and insight, helping to turn previously opaque processes into transparent highly efficient systems.”

LuminX is experiencing strong early traction, with many warehouses using the technology. One such early adopter is Vertical Cold Storage. Robert Bascom, COO of Vertical Cold Storage, commented on their experience: 

“LuminX’s technology is set to revolutionise our warehouse productivity and operations. It’s allowing us to automate critical tasks, significantly enhance quality, and reduce claims.” He added, “In my entire career, I have yet to encounter a product that so effectively improves efficiency while simultaneously boosting quality and reliability.”

Kat Collins of 1Sharpe Capital, a key investor, stated, “Edge-deployed vision-language models are breaking the two toughest bottlenecks in logistics—labor scarcity and data blindness. By turning a low-cost camera into a perceptive co-worker that sees, understands, and acts in real time, LuminX is unlocking a step-change in operational intelligence and efficiency for every pallet, conveyer, and forklift.”

The newly acquired funds will be strategically invested in advancing LuminX’s core research and development in Vision Language Models for logistics, further optimising them for edge deployment, expanding its specialised engineering talent, and scaling go-to-market activities.  

The company says this robot is built with a sense of touch, something its older systems lacked, and can now stow and retrieve three out of every four products in its inventory.

The robot’s rollout is already underway in fulfilment centres in Washington, USA, and Hamburg, Germany, with over 500,000 orders processed so far. 

Designed specifically to operate within the fabric-covered storage pods that dominate Amazon warehouses, Vulcan can pick items from tight, crowded compartments without damaging them, a task previously assigned to human staff because older robots couldn’t cope.

What makes Vulcan different is not just its ability to grab things, but how it does so. It uses a dual-arm mechanism. One arm, described by Amazon as looking like “a ruler stuck onto a hair straightener,” rearranges existing contents in a bin to make space for new items. 

This tool is fitted with force sensors to measure contact pressure, allowing it to move carefully without crushing anything. The second arm has a suction cup guided by a camera. This helps the robot extract specific items while avoiding accidental double-picks.

“Vulcan represents a fundamental leap forward in robotics,” said Aaron Parness, Director of Applied Science at Amazon. “It’s not just seeing the world, it’s feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now.”

Amazon says Vulcan was trained using physical interactions, including data on touch and resistance. It can now learn from its own mistakes, building an understanding of how different objects respond to handling. The company expects the robot to improve as it continues learning.

This isn’t Amazon’s first robot, but it is its most dexterous. Earlier systems like Sparrow and Cardinal relied mainly on vision and suction, suitable only for basic picks. 

Vulcan, on the other hand, mimics the tactile awareness of a human worker and can function where others fall short, like in the uppermost and lowest levels of shelving stacks, which usually require humans to bend or climb.

Vulcan will reduce the need for repetitive reaching, ladder-climbing, and squatting. This, Amazon says, is part of a strategy to cut down on injuries and improve workplace comfort.

“Vulcan works alongside our employees, and the combination is better than either on their own,” Parness added.

But for many warehouse workers, of which Amazon employs over a million globally, these developments may raise uncomfortable questions about job security.

The company already operates with a robotic workforce of more than 750,000 units. With Vulcan being positioned to handle the bulk of order picking and stowing, concerns over displacement are bound to intensify.

Even Parness acknowledges the limits of automation: “I don’t believe in 100 percent automation. If we had to get Vulcan to do 100 percent of the stows and picks, it would never happen.”

Amazon insists this is about collaboration, not replacement. In automating physically taxing tasks, they argue, human workers are freed to pursue more technical roles within the company. 

According to Kari Freitas Hardy, a frontline employee in Spokane, “It’s great to see how many of my co-workers have gained new job skills and taken on more technical roles, like I did, once they started working closer with the technology at our sites.”