Humanoid Raises $152 Million to Expand Robotics Company

U.K.-based robotics firm Humanoid says it is now a $1 billion company.

The startup achieved that status, becoming “Europe’s first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn,” after raising $152 million in a Series A round announced Tuesday (July 21).

“Now is a defining moment for the European technology ecosystem which positions the region among the global leaders in one of the world’s fastest-growing tech sectors,” Humanoid said in a news release. “Until now, much of the physical AI momentum has been concentrated in the United States and China. The investment demonstrates that the U.K. and continental Europe can produce and scale globally competitive humanoid robotics companies at the cutting-edge of the field.”

The company said the new capital will help it develop and launch its  humanoid robotics platform, and help fund long-term commercial deployments with customers in sectors such as logistics, manufacturing and retail.

In addition, the funds will help it begin mass manufacturing of wheel-based humanoid robots and to develop its proprietary AI brain KinetIQ.

According to the release, Humanoid has secured partnerships with companies such as SAP, Nvidia, Bosch, and Siemens and recently inked “the industry’s largest publicly announced commercial agreement” with Schaeffler to deploy thousands of humanoid robots for the manufacturing space.

“Humanoid robotics will be one of the defining technologies of the next decade, reshaping how commercial and industrial work gets done,” said Zia Huque, general partner at Prime Movers Lab, which led the round. “We expect the field to consolidate around a handful of category leaders across the US, Europe, and China. Humanoid AI will be one of a small cadre of robotics companies that will define humanoid robotics in Europe and beyond.”

In other robotics news, PYMNTS wrote recently about the rise of “cobots”—collaborative robots—which are designed to help workers with repetitive, physically demanding or precision-oriented tasks while letting their human counterparts tackle judgment-intensive activities.

While this dramatically expands automation’s potential, the report said, it also poses risk-related questions: Can autonomous systems function near human workers safely? Can these machines reliably interpret their environment? Can manufacturers ensure that intelligent systems will operate predictably under real-world conditions?

“Those questions may determine the pace of industrial automation more than advances in robotics hardware itself,” the report said. “In a traditional industrial setting, safety is achieved through distance. In a collaborative environment, safety must be engineered into every interaction. Robots must recognize people, anticipate movement, understand context and react appropriately to unexpected situations.”