Robotics raises: BRINC, Microagi, Monumental, Walden Robotics, Xynova

We’re back with another roundup of raises for the week of 7/20. This time we saw several young companies raise sizable early-stage rounds including claiming to have raised Germany's largest seed so far.

Beyond those big numbers, we’ve got a humanoid hardware firm, another building drones for public safety, a startup building brick-laying robots, and more.

BRINC, $125 million, Venture round

Drone companies have seen a surge in investor interest in recent years as VCs go all in on defense. Public safety drones could be the next hot category for this flying tech, if BRINC’s latest $125 million round is any indicator. The round was led by Motorola Solutions with participation from Index Ventures and Figma founder Dylan Field.

BRINC builds drones for public safety organizations that can respond to 911 calls or fly into situations that would be dangerous for humans. The company’s founder Blake Resnick was compelled to launch the company after the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017. The startup plans to use the funds to scale domestic manufacturing and bring more products to market.

Microagi, $55 million, Seed

There are quite a few startups building software infrastructure for robots to learn from their surroundings but Microagi has a different approach than many of its peers. The company’s Atlas software is designed to run on top of a robot’s existing model and uses data collected by its hardware to fine-tune a robot’s existing model to be better suited to the task at hand.

The German startup just raised a $55 million seed round — German's largest seed — led by Hummingbird with participation from Northzone and LocalGlobe, among others. Microagi plans to use the funding to scale its Atlas software.

Monumental, $32 million, Series B

Construction is one of many industries reeling with labor shortages which makes it a prime candidate for automation. There are many potential workflows for construction bots and Dutch startup Monumental picked an important one, building walls. The startup’s robots are designed to precisely lay bricks and mortar using sensors, cranes and computer vision. 

The company just raised a $32 million Series B round led by Khosla Ventures. The company told A3 that the funds will be used for hiring and expanding into the U.S. market, where the startup has already seen significant demand.

Walden Robotics, $300 million, Seed

Launching a company out of stealth with $300 million in funding is no small feat. Waleon Robotics, which builds general purpose bots, did just that with its recent seed round led by Toyota and Deviation Capital that values the young company at more than $1 billion.

While Walden is a new entrant to the very crowded general purpose robot category, it's built on a decade of research by the company’s founding team. This research surrounded large behavioral models and Diffusion Policy. Brian Heater has more.

Xynova, CN¥500 million ($74 million), Series A

Robots have a lot of hardware components and while we typically see startups focused on building one specific part or the whole bot, Chinese startup Xynova is doing something a bit different. The company is building, arguably, two of humanoid’s biggest hardware needs, actuators and robotic hands.

The startup raised a CN¥500 million ($74 million) Series A round that was led by Meituan with participation from Xiaomi and NIO Capital, among others. It plans to reach annual production of 10,000 robotics hands by the end of the year.