AI humanoid robots step closer – thanks to new $350 million investment

AI-powered humanoid robots that co-exist with humans to help our workloads may seem like the plot of a sci-fi movie, but companies have been working on them for years. Case in point: Apptronik, a robotics lab founded in early 2016, has been working on a 5-foot 8-inch, 160-pound, general-purpose humanoid robot named Apollo. The company’s latest funding will accelerate the robot’s deployment.   

On Wednesday, Austin-based Apptronik announced the closing of a $350 million Series A funding round that will be used to fuel Apollo’s deployment, scale company operations, grow its team, and accelerate innovation, according to a company press release. The investment was co-led by B Capital and Capital Factory with participation from DeepMind, Google’s AI lab. 

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“With Apptronik, we see a world in which humanoid robots play a vital role in addressing societal challenges — from assisting with disaster relief and elder care to supporting space exploration and medical advancements,” said Howard Morgan, chair and general partner of B Capital.

With the investment, Apptronik plans to explore different form factors for Apollo, further develop its full-stack robot platform, and expand the robot’s capabilities so that it can address a wide range of applications across different industries such as logistics, manufacturing, eldercare, and healthcare. 

Lastly, the funding will be used to increase Apollo’s manufacturing to meet what the company describes as “skyrocketing customer demand.” According to the post, the orders span different verticals, including automotive, electronics manufacturing, third-party logistics providers, beverage bottling and fulfillment, and consumer packaged goods.

“By uniting cutting-edge AI with hardware engineered for meaningful interaction, we’re shaping a future where robots become true partners in driving progress,” said Jeff Cardenas, CEO and co-founder of Apptronik.

In 2022, Apptronik partnered with NASA to develop Apollo. At the time, NASA said Apollo could help establish bases for human missions to other planets and astronomical bodies, such as the Moon and Mars.

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A year later, Apptronik launched Apollo in alpha, securing commercial agreements with Mercedes-Benz and GXO Logistics. Apptronik also partnered with Google DeepMind to combine its AI expertise with Apptronik’s humanoid robot platform. The new funding will allow the company to build on that momentum and better compete in the humanoid robot market — which has several established and upcoming players. 

Tesla also has a humanoid robot named Optimus, known as the Tesla bot, and seems to be ramping up development with dozens of job openings available across AI, robotics, manufacturing, IT, and more. Similarly, last month, Caitlin Kalinowski, who joined OpenAI in November to lead the robotics and consumer hardware team, shared the first OpenAI Robotics hardware roles, including an EE Sensing Engineer, Robotics Mechanical Design Engineer, and TPM Manager. 

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Furthermore, OpenAI filed a trademark application on January 31 with the US Patent and Trademark Office that included descriptions of many hardware products, such as “User-programmable humanoid robots, not configured,” and “Humanoid robots having communication and learning functions for assisting and entertaining people.”

The rapid developments in the AI space these past two years have made building humanoid robots all that much more tangible. As a result, we can expect a lot of progress to occur in the humanoid robot space within the near future, with the ultimate goal of making them safe and useful enough for everyone to use.