When Seth Winatut quit his job in GE Ventures to help start the eclipse projects in 2015, robotics was in his mind. Or in particular, the number of early -stage robotics startups, which was struggling to launch due to lack of interest.
“These are the teams who just finished their post documents in Water Low, or CMU, or MIT, and they were launching robotics companies, and avoiding what I had heard from Startup, 'Hey, we have a difficult time to increase the institutional venture capital.” “At the time, in the Silicon Valley, most of the venture capital was going into a very strong application layer or some very much adult computing platform application layer.”
Since then, a lot has changed.
Now, after investing in robotics startups for 10 years, Winter Trott, a colleague of Aleppo, said that the time to invest in robotics never improved. Robotics startup market has become stronger and has become significantly better and cheaper in hardware and software that strengthened these boats.
Venture investment in the category is also gaining its pace. According to the cranch base dat, investors put $ 6 billion in robotics startups in the first seven months of 2025. The data company predicts that this year's financing will eclipse 2024, which is one of the only non -AI categories to experience the increase in funding.
Although someone can argue that robotics is seeing an increase in investors' interest due to AI – and it is not wrong to recognize the role of AI in the development of robotic tech – those investors who have been focusing on this category for more than a few years have said that the industry has not only reached this point.
Reaching up to maturity
Winter Trott said, when a small start from Massachusetts, KiV systems got through Amazon, Winter Trott said the actual Catalic for the industry was actually returned in 2013.
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“I want to say that the acquisition of Kewa systems was the acquisition of 1,000 robotic startup,” said Winter Trott. “Between 2011 and 2015, 2016, this was really the case. You just saw that many new companies started.
He said the first wave helped engineers attract the sector and helped companies detect the product market fit.
The bee's partners' colleague Kira Nadelman echoed. Nodelman told Tech Crunch in the last decade of the trial and mistakenly helped startup to find out what the market is actually looking for when it comes to robotics and automation.
Some companies, such as the Rapid Robotics, supported by the noodleman, trying to find out what the market wants. These failures have helped the next batch of the founders of the startup, who now have a better guess what potential users want from this sector.
He said that Naderman had the same experience with his own investment dissertation, which changed the market.
Nodalman said, “Lights out manufacturing assumes that there are zero people in the loop, it is not just happening, we have proved that we have already returned in the 2010s.” “Let me do a simple task, machine tandering, it's everything that is putting a hand out of a machine. The thing here is that you can imagine how few hanging fruits, frequently work, such as machine tending.”
Fady Saad, a general partner of the early -stage robotics -based cybrinitics ventures, also started his firm before AI Boom when he saw that he was spending time with funds for the initial stage robotics companies during his time as a co -founder in Masro Botics.
Saad said that hardware costs have also created investors' interest in the sector, Saad said that making a robot today is cheaper than five years ago. This facilitates companies to get a more viable way for the scale and make them more attractive to potential ventures.
Saad said, “The cost of construction of robotics continues in a dramatic way.” “The progress in sensor technology, computers, and batteries, all of them, was the best time to start a complete stack robotics solution.”
The progress in AI is also not hurting the industry. While AI has been termed as the main reason by many people that robotics are starting to see interest.
Saad added that while AI and large language models can be helpful for robot training, these LLMs are primarily trained on online information while robots interact with the real world.
This is a real -life data -based model. Nvidia just released a new set of global models for robot training in August. But Saad has predicted that robots, especially those who will be present with people, will take a little longer to capture and train global data.
The day today
The industry may have begun to flourish, but that does not mean that every startup has yet to detect the best approach. Nor do some categories within robotics are adults like others.
Some of the first few markets to adopt robotics and automation, including manufacturing, warehouses, and construction, are attractive to robotics startup bakers.
For Venturoth, Saad, and noodleman, health care and surgical robots have also become a great area for investing. Nodalman also added Elder Care to this category.
Nodalman said, “Home assistance is interesting, I looked at industrial robotics for 10 years.” “Manufacturing and mining, labor shortage, aging population, no human is available at any cost, even incomplete robotics are not better than anything.”
Saad added that vertically focused robotics companies gain access to real -world and physical data even more than horizontal players.
An area that these VCs are not so excited are not humanoids or user-and especially users-oriented humanoids.
Saad is not convinced that people would like to have a robot in their home at any time. He added that even inhuman consumer -based robotics companies have struggled to excite consumers.
Saad said, “The only successful user robot company, aerobot, failed to bring the second act.” “Pool cleaning robots, lawn cutting, moping and floor cleansing robots, none of them worked for any reason.”
Although the industry is still far from more complex robotic models, such as the trade success of humanoids, VC is investing more in this sector. Despite the fact that this interest is increasing the cost of deals, the increase in interest is a positive positive for the industry, Winter Trott and Saad said, as the potential customer base for robotics startup is increasing.
“There are quite examples of successful trade organizations, successful robotics companies that have become a valuable trading organization,” said Winter Trott. “Ten, 15 years ago, it was objectionable whether a huge and promoted market for such solutions was going to be made. Now, customers are very aware.”
