Maybe robots will take over – but not only any robots.
Creator of the robot brain Physical intelligenceThe company’s massive $400 million raise at a $2 billion valuation last week highlighted several trends in robotics startup investing. First, investors appear to be supporting startups that are developing versatile robots that may perform greater than just one or two easy tasks. Many startups receiving large funding have a common investor: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Overall, the robotics sector has had a good 12 months in terms of enterprise funding. According to Crunchbase, robotics startups have raised $6.4 billion so far in 2024 — a pace that can bring nearly $7.5 billion in funding for the full 12 months and surpass the $6.9 billion raised in 2023. , according to Crunchbase data.
These numbers pale in comparison to the $14.7 billion raised in 2021, but nonetheless show a pretty solid sector that continues to attract investors and their money.
Money for more flexible robots
However, a noticeable difference between this 12 months’s and last 12 months’s numbers is the variety of rounds. This 12 months, only 473 rounds were collected, a sharp decline from 671 last 12 months.
One thing that helped boost the total dollar amount was the size of the 12 months’s two largest rounds: $400 million for physical intelligence and $675 million for Character at the starting of the 12 months. Both rounds were larger than last 12 months’s top robotics round, a $330 million Series F for the San Francisco-based drone maker Zipline.
Physical Intelligence plans to use its latest money injection to improve robot performance and create core software that will be used on various robot models. Meanwhile, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Figura, which is developing artificial intelligence-enhanced robots that it hopes will have the opportunity to perform hazardous jobs and alleviate labor shortages, raised a $675 million round at a preliminary valuation of about $2 billion in February.
These rounds also seem to highlight a common trend in the startup robotics scene immediately – using artificial intelligence to create robots that may do greater than just pack boxes in a warehouse.
That’s a far cry from the warehouse’s robotics arm taking things off the shelf, and these two startups aren’t the only ones raising big funds in an attempt to expand robots’ job skills.
In July in Pittsburgh Skillful artificial intelligence — also developing brain models that will be used in a number of robots and for a number of tasks — raised $300 million in Series A funding, valuing the company at $1.5 billion.
In April in Santa Clara, California Collaborative robotics closed a $100 million Series B. The startup creates what it calls “practical collaborative robots” – or “cobots” for short – to collaborate with humans in sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, retail and more.
Famous investor
Using artificial intelligence to create robots and/or software brains to enable our mechanical friends to perform various tasks is not the only thing some of those big rounds have in common.
Some also have a common investor who knows all too well what robots can do in a warehouse.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – individually or through his Bezos expeditions investment company – invests heavily in these trends. Bezos co-hosted the round for Physical Intelligence, and Bezos Expeditions co-hosted the round for Skild AI and participated in the Figure round.
Additionally, Bezos was an investor in Substitute — an artificial intelligence startup that uses the computational principles of the brain to develop general intelligence for robots — before being acquired by Internal in 2022
According to Crunchbase dataBezos Expeditions has also invested in a Swiss robot on wheels powered by artificial intelligence The Swiss Mile and a Boston-based industrial robot manufacturer Rethink robotics.
It’s secure to assume that this list will proceed to grow.