Queue emerged from stealth with $18.6M total funding for a robotic system that fills and verifies prescriptions without an on-site pharmacist, targeting lower-cost fulfillment and broader access.
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Queue, a Palo Alto startup building an autonomous robotic pharmacy, emerged from stealth Tuesday with a $12.6 million seed round and a working system already in operation at a test site. The round was led by AlleyCorp and was oversubscribed, the company said.
Queue's robotic system fills and verifies prescriptions directly from sealed wholesale pill bottles. The key: it does not require an on-site pharmacist. That removes a major bottleneck in pharmacy labor, a cost that has risen sharply as retail chains struggle to staff stores. The system is designed to handle the full workflow – scanning, counting, labeling, verification – without human intervention at the point of dispensing.
The company previously raised a $6 million pre-seed round led by Riot Ventures less than a year ago. Total funding now stands at $18.6 million. Other investors in the seed round include House Capital, Ubiquity Ventures, Grep Ventures and Banter Capital.
Queue's pitch is straightforward: lower the cost of prescription fulfillment and expand pharmacy access into areas that lack a full-time pharmacist. That could apply to retail chains, hospital outpatient pharmacies, and underserved rural or urban locations. The company said its system can reduce the per-prescription cost by cutting the need for licensed pharmacists to perform routine verification tasks.
The announcement comes as the pharmacy industry experiments with automation to address rising labor expenses and margin pressure. Traditional chains like CVS and Walgreens have closed hundreds of stores in recent years, citing reimbursement headwinds and staffing shortages. A fully automated dispensing solution, if it scales, could change the economics of a single location.
Queue said its system is now operational at a test site in Palo Alto, handling real prescriptions under a partnership with a local pharmacy. The company plans to use the seed funding to build out its manufacturing capacity and deploy additional units by the end of the year.
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