More than $7 billion flowed into robotics startups across the United States, China, and Europe in the first half of 20261,2,3,4,5,6,7 — as AI foundation models rewrote the investment case for physical automation worldwide.
Skild AI raised $1.4B in January 20261, ten times its $135M Series B from months earlier. The Pittsburgh-based company's round set the tone: investors now price AI-driven robots as near-term commercial bets, not long-horizon experiments.
Chinese startup Shihang Intelligent raised $1B at Series A stage in June5 — a scale once reserved for late-stage companies — as China accelerates its industrial automation push. Germany's Neura Robotics, a leading European humanoid robotics developer, secured up to $1.4B in a Series C that same month4. Mind Robotics closed $500M in March2 and added a $400M follow-on by May3.
Apptronik extended its Series A with $520M in February6, building on $415M raised in 2025. Saronic, developing autonomous maritime vessels, closed a $1.75B Series D in March7.
Billion-dollar valuations at Series A and B are the telling detail. Foundation models trained on unstructured data let robots generalize across tasks. Earlier systems required expensive per-task programming. That bottleneck has narrowed as model capabilities scaled — and capital from San Francisco to Shanghai is following.
M&A is accelerating alongside the funding. Meta acquired Assured Robot Intelligence in May8. Skild AI acquired Zebra Technologies' Robotics Division in April9, expanding enterprise deployment footprint shortly after its own mega-round closed.
For global manufacturers, logistics operators, and defence contractors, robotics is now the clearest near-term path from AI capability to physical-world revenue. The harder test follows: consistent performance outside controlled environments, at the scale needed to justify these valuations in every market from Detroit to Shenzhen.
