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Fetch Robotics has raised $25 million in Series B funding, led by Sway Ventures. In total, the San Jose, Calif., firm has raised $48 million.

Pac-Van has expanded its storage and warehousing operations with two recent acquisitions in the South and Southwest.

Those boxes piling up on your doorstep over the holidays don’t ship from Santa’s workshop. As Americans spend more money shopping online, real estate developers are sinking record amounts of money into new warehouse space, building bigger, taller structures to meet the needs of e-commerce — and the robots that help it along.

Warehousing and distribution firms are beginning to attract more interest from investors as demand for storage space nationwide heats up and competition intensifies among smaller players.

Warehouse operators are looking for ways to automate their operations to meet increasing demands for e-commerce fulfillment services and to compensate for what appears to be a growing shortage of workers.

The U.K.’s biggest online grocer hit a milestone this year: Ocado Group put together an order of 50 items, including produce, meat and dairy, in five minutes.

Amazon.com Inc. is experimenting with a new delivery service intended to make more products available for free two-day delivery and relieve overcrowding in its warehouses, according to two people familiar with the plan, which will push the online retailer deeper into functions handled by longtime partners UPS Inc. and FedEx Corp

Pennsylvania is floating a tax on warehouse services as a way to help close the budget gap, a move critics say could threaten the fastest-growing sector of the Lehigh Valley economy and force customers of third-party logistics providers to relocate to neighboring states.