We are entering a golden age of robotics startups — and not just because of AI

When Seth Winterroth left his job at GE Ventures to help launch Eclipse in 2015, Robotics was in mind. Or more specifically, the number of startups at an early stage robotics that had difficulty launching due to a lack of interest.

“These are teams that had just completed their postdocs at Waterloo, or CMU, or MIT and Robotics companies, and the chorus that I constantly heard of the startups was:” Hey, we are very difficult to raise institutional risk capital, “Winterroth told WAN. Application layer or the application layer of some very mature computer platforms. “

A lot has changed since then.

Now, after investing in robotics startups for 10 years, Winterroth, a partner at Eclipse, said that the time to invest in robotics has never been so better. The Robotics startup market has grown up and the hardware and software that drives these bots has become considerably better -and cheaper.

Venture investing in the category also gains strength. Investors shot $ 6 billion in robotics startups according to the first seven months of 2025 Crunchbase -data. The Data Company predicts that this year’s financing plots will darken 2024, making it one of the few non-AI-AI categories to experience a boost in financing.

Although you could claim that robotics sees an increase in the interests of investors because of AI – and it is not wrong to recognize the role of AI in the progress of robot technology – investors who have focused on the category for longer than in recent years, said that the industry has not come so far only because of the progress in AI in recent years.

Achieving ripening

The real catalyst for the industry to start with Momentum actually happened in 2012, said Winterroth, when Kiva Systems, a small startup from Massachusetts, was taken over by Amazon.

“I would like to say that the acquisition of KIVA Systems was the acquisition that launched 1,000 robot -like startups,” said Winterroth. “Between 2011 and 2015, 2016, that was really the case. You just saw a number of different new companies. Some people like 6 river systems, or Clearpath robotics, were successful, but most of them were not. But that talent and that learning connections, and it was brought into the next series.”

This first wave helped engineers to attract the sector and helped companies to find out a product market, he said.

Kira Noodleman, a partner at Bee Partners, repeated this. Noodleman told WAN in the last decade of trial and error to help startups find out what the market is looking for when it comes to robotics and automation.

Some companies, such as Rapid Robotics, who supported the Noodleman, fell out to find out what the market wanted. Those failures have helped the next series of startup founders, who now have a much better idea of ​​what potential customers want from this sector.

Noodleman had a similar experience with her own investment script, she said, who changed as the market grew up.

“Lights out manufacturing assumes that there are zero people in the loop; that just doesn’t happen. We have proven that in the years 2010 already in the years 2010,” said Noodleman. “Let me take a simple task, take care of it by machine, the only thing is that someone’s hand puts something in and out of a machine. The point here is that you can imagine how many low -hanging fruit, repetitive tasks are there, such as mechanically taking care of.”

Fady Saad, a general partner at Robotics-oriented Cybernetix companies at an early stage, also launched his company prior to the AI ​​Boom after he noticed that he spent a lot of time on connecting robotics companies at an early stage with sources of financing as a co-founder at Massrotics.

Falling hardware costs have also stimulated the interest in investors in the sector, Saad said and noted that it is cheaper to build robots today than five years ago. This allows companies to have a more feasible path to scale and makes them more attractive for potential venturebackers.

“The costs of building robotics went dramatically,” said Saad. “Progress in sensor technology, calculation and batteries, that was all the perfect timing to start full-stack robotics solutions.”

The progress in AI also does not harm industry. Although AI is advertised by many as the main reason why robotics is starting to see an increase in interest-in addition to a fascination for humanoid robots-is not the only factor with Elon Musk-driven.

Saad added that although AI and large language models can be useful for training robots, these LLMs are mainly trained in online information, while robots interact with the real world.

There are companies that build models based on that real-life data; Nvidia has just released a new set of world models for robot training in August. But Saad predicted that it will take a little longer to catch and train robots, especially those who will exist next to people, about world data.

Current day

Momentum in the industry may start to swell, but that does not mean that every startup has discovered the best approach so far. Neither are some categories within robotics as mature as others.

Some of the first few markets that take robotics and automation, including production, storage and construction, remain attractive for starting backers of robotics.

For Winterroth, Saad and Noodleman, health care and surgically related robots also remain a compelling area to invest in. Noodleman also adds elderly to that category.

“In-home help is interesting, coming from me after I have looked at industrial robotics for 10 years,” said Noodleman. “Production and mining, burning labor shortages, aging populations, there are no people available for every price, even imperfect robotics are better than nothing.”

Saad added that vertically targeted robotics companies usually also have access to more Real-World and physical data than horizontal players.

An area that these VCs are not so enthusiastic about are humanoids or consumers and especially on consumer-oriented humanoids.

Saad is not convinced that people want a robot in their home soon. He added that even non-humanoid consumer-oriented robotics companies had difficulty making consumers enthusiastic.

“The only successful consumer Robot Company, Irobot, could not come up with a second act,” said Saad. “Polar cleaning robot, lawn mower, mop and floor cleaning robot, none of these worked for whatever reason.”

Although the industry has been removed from commercial success of more complicated robot models, such as humanoids, VC’s more capital in the sector. Despite the fact that this interest rate increases the costs of deals, the increase in interest is a net positive for industry, said Winterroth and Saad, because the potential customer base for robotics startups continues to grow.

“There are enough examples of successful commercial organizations, successful robotics companies, which have become a valuable commercial organization,” said Winterroth. “Ten, 15 years ago, the question was whether or not there would be a large and thriving market for this kind of solutions. Now there is a lot of customer consciousness.”