In This Story
Apptronik said Thursday that it had closed its Series A fundraise at roughly $350 million, with plans to use the funding to scale production of its artificial intelligence-powered humanoid robots.
The round was led by B Capital, a venture capital firm chaired by Howard Morgan, and Capital Factory, which connects seed-stage technology firms to angel investors and venture capital. Google (GOOGL+0.55%) also participated in the round; its DeepMind AI research lab announced a partnership with Apptronik in December.
According to Apptronik, the funding will help it scale work on Apollo, its line of commercial general-purpose humanoid robots introduced in late 2023. The Austin, Texas-based firm in March partnered with Nvidia to integrate its tech into Apollo. It showed off the robots last month at CES 2025.
“We’re creating the world’s most advanced and capable humanoid robots, designed to work alongside humans in meaningful and transformative ways,” Apptronik CEO and co-founder Jeff Cardenas said in a statement. “[W]e’re shaping a future where robots become true partners in driving progress.”
Like other companies working on humanoid robots, Apollo is designed to perform work in factories, where companies can train and test how the robots perform simple tasks. So far, Apptronik, which was founded at the University of Texas at Austin in 2016, has two commercial partnerships.
The first is with GXO Logistics (GXO-15.21%), which also works with Reflex Robotics and Agility Robotics. In June, GXO said Apptronik’s five-foot-eight, 160-pound robots have “great potential to add value throughout the distribution center,” performing repetitive and labor-intensive work.
Apptronik’s tech is also being used by Mercedes-Benz (MBGAF+4.48%) for “low skill, physically challenging” labor, the companies said last March. The automaker is testing one robot at a plant in Hungary.
“With expanded deployment planned for 2025, Apollo is poised to transform workplaces worldwide,” Apptronik said in a statement. Last August, Cardenas told Forbes that Apptronik was talking with about 60 potential customers, with a commercial launch planned for the end of this year.
Even with the latest round, which took its total cash raised to $376 million from $28 million, Apptronik has far less cash than some of its rivals.
Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA+6.13%), which has a market capitalization of more than $1.1 trillion, has been testing its Optimus robots in its factories for months and has started hiring more staff to work on the project.
Figure AI last February raised $675 million in a Series B round that included Microsoft (MSFT+0.20%), Nvidia (NVDA+3.48%), and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, giving the company a $2.6 billion valuation.
CEO Brett Adcock recently said Figure would exit its partnership with OpenAI and announced his firm had signed its second commercial customer, which is “one of the biggest U.S. companies.” Figure, which began working with BMW last year, could potentially ship 100,0000 robots over the next four years, Adcock wrote on LinkedIn.