and led the raise, which included participation from��, founder , and . Anvil had previously raised $1 million in pre-seed capital from Matter in 2025.

The San Francisco-based startup builds custom robots for businesses and describes itself as a hardware, software and manufacturing platform.

Before starting Anvil Robotics last July, , CEO, and CTO , spent six months talking to a variety of businesses. They concluded that physical AI teams in companies, big and small, were spending over six months piecing together various robot arms, cameras and open-source libraries “just to get a glued-together prototype.”

“This isn’t a problem if you’re , or have nine-figure R&D budgets, and you custom design and build everything, including hardware and software,” Xia told Crunchbase News in an interview. “But for many companies, even well-funded teams, standing up a robotic system with all the sensors and tools and controls you need is a huge challenge that costs you both time and money.”

So the pair started Anvil to fill that gap.

“We support physical AI teams who don’t have $100 million, to make this industry much more accessible,” Xia said.

Customers can go on Anvil’s site and “essentially build out what they want,” he added, using either prebuilt kits or customization.

“They are very much like Legos,” Xia said. Anvil then ships the robots within 1 to 2 days via 2-day air freight. The company is able to do so because it has a significant presence in Taiwan, and is its own manufacturer, he said. (But more on that later.)

Its robots are about the size of a middle-school-aged child, but big enough to do basic dextrous tasks. Anvil’s robots typically cost $5,000 to $10,000, but its least expensive model is just $1,900.

“I think the pricing is going down to a point where researchers and individuals are able to afford this,” Xia said. “I think it’s going to make a really big difference with the community and we’ll see a lot more activity in people building physical AI applications.”

Anvil started shipping robots in September and has so far delivered over 100 of them to customers globally.

Open-platform approach

Anvil competes with the likes of and but claims that it’s different from other startups in the space in a couple of ways.

“Most are basically building toys for rich people,” Xia said.

Anvil’s model stands out, he believes, because it’s an open platform, meaning that all of its robot designs are open-sourced. Most other startups, according to Xia, sell a proprietary design that gets customers “locked in hardware and software.”

“If you work with Anvil, you’re not locked into a single vendor, plus you have large communities behind you,” he said.

Also, as mentioned above, Anvil is an actual manufacturer, and it “controls the whole stack.”

“We don’t outsource — we do this hard part ourselves,” he told Crunchbase News. “We buy each part and operate our own factory, which our customers can leverage.”

Further, Anvil customers can choose where their components come from and how many to build. Historically, if a U.S. company has wanted to deploy a robot, it’s largely been dependent on hardware built in China.

“If a business wants 10 robots made with Taiwanese or Japanese parts, we can do it,” Xia said. “I believe many companies will become more aware of supply chain risk and need this. Many robots today are made in China, and we’re not exactly on great terms [with the country].

Business growth

Anvil won’t disclose hard revenue figures, but Xia noted that it has reached seven figures and that it has over 50 customers. That revenue mostly comes from hardware today, but the company plans to release more software, data tools and services, which should diversify its revenue base.

Its customers are a varied bunch, with some “exciting” ones such as giant tech companies under NDA. Those they can talk about are a small chocolate factory based in Portland, Oregon; ’s GEAR lab, which is doing the humanoid research behind GR00T; and , which has raised more than $300 million to automate welding and industrial tasks.

So far, all of its customers have been inbound, according to Xia.

“It’s all been word-of-mouth, and a lot of it is community-driven,” said Xia, who added that he previously co-founded another startup called and was formerly chief product officer at .

A ‘robotics foundry’

, founding partner at Matter, told Crunchbase News via email that his firm has been investing “at the forefront” of physical AI “for some time.”

“It quickly became clear that innovation on the hardware — the motors, actuators, sensors, systems, etc. — hasn’t kept pace with the rapid improvement in AI. They are still stuck in the same paradigms that powered the industrial robotics of decades past.”

In his view, AI robots today are like “incredible brains trapped in weak, incapable bodies.”

That’s where Anvil comes in. His firm incubated the startup to create a robotics foundry that could “move many companies forward.”

“Behind great generations of products are foundational platform enablers,” Huang said, “and we founded Anvil to be to physical AI what AWS () has been to SaaS and what TSMC () has been to chips.”

The hard part of hardware is less about creating a great robot once, and more about making many great robots “over and over again,” Huang added.

Anvil’s founders, he said, will be able to produce and iterate on hardware at “software-like speeds” and then deliver it at scale in production.

Added Huang: “This is something unmatched.”

Overall, robotics startup funding hit a record high last year, . Startups in the sector raised nearly $14 billion in funding in 2025, up from $8.2 billion in 2024, even topping the $13.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021.

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• Amid Record Robotics Funding, Apptronik Raises $520M Series A Extension To Boost Production Of Humanoid Robot Apollo
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Illustration:

Venture firms that set up shop in the Texas capital city included , , and 1, among others. famously moved ’s headquarters to Austin in 2021, while also purchasing a house and establishing a residence there.

But as more employees returned to in-office work, Austin slowly seemed to fall out of favor with the tech community, some of whom said it had been overhyped as a startup hub.

There were reports of tech workers who had moved to the city during the pandemic and , saying they were going back to places like the Bay Area. Musk back to California in 2023.

Funding tops pandemic peak

Undeterred by the “tourists,” the startup and venture community in Austin kept plugging away. And those efforts are reflected in a surge in funding to startups headquartered there last year, with 2025 posting an all-time high for Austin venture investment, Crunchbase data shows.

Investment into Austin-based startups spiked 64.8% to $7.19 billion in 2025 as more investors poured money into companies based in the region, according to Crunchbase . That’s compared with the $4.37 billion raised by Austin-area startups in 2024 and tops even the $6.1 billion raised in 2021, at the height of the venture funding frenzy.

Notably, deal counts actually decreased from 312 in 2024 to 272 year over year, signaling an increase in later-stage deals. Indeed, the data corroborates that with $4 billion of the total raised in 2025 classified as late-stage rounds.

Last year’s totals were also more than double — 130% higher — than the $3.1 billion raised in 2023. That money was raised across 403 deals, signaling much smaller round sizes at the time and a more mature market.

A tech scene decades in the making

, managing partner of , doesn’t believe that the Austin funding performance in 2025 was anomalous.

Rather, he calls it “the payoff from decades of compounding.”

“Talent density in venture categories such as software, fintech, health tech, defense and�� robotics has reached a critical mass, driven by waves of Bay Area relocations, both full HQ moves and satellite offices, that brought technical, product and operational talent into the market,” Flager said.

That talent eventually left to build new companies, he said, and the cycle repeated.

“On the capital side, the stack has matured across all stages, from pre-seed through growth, with local firms that have now cycled through multiple funds and understand the market deeply,” Flager said. “Layer in a business-friendly regulatory environment, a relatively lower cost of living, as well as a lower effective tax rate, and Austin becomes an attractive place to start and scale a company.”

Former Austin Mayor saw so much potential in the city’s startup scene that he began a career in venture investing after his tenure ended in early 2023. (He now works for New York-based ).

Part of the city’s success as a startup hub stems from its reputation as a haven for mavericks and risk-takers, Adler has said.

“Most cities in the world, you try something, you fail; it’s hard to have access to the capital the second time,” he told co-founder in a in 2022. “In Austin, the civic folk heroes are the people that tried something and it didn’t quite work out and they worked on it until it did.”

, founder of , a solo GP venture firm based in nearby San Antonio, said that it feels like Texas and the Austin metro area specifically are becoming more attractive to manufacturing- and engineering-heavy businesses.

“Some of that may be thanks to Tesla, and some of it may simply reflect the physical advantages of the state,” he told Crunchbase News. “Either way, this [surge in financing] feels less like hype returning and more like capital concentrating around a narrower set of serious, technically differentiated companies.”

Deal sizes grow

That diversity among funded startups is reflected in last year’s investment totals for Austin, which were boosted by several large, late-stage deals across a broad range of industries.

The largest was a $1 billion Series C round for energy provider in October. New York-based led that financing, which valued the 2-year-old company at $4 billion.

Looking back, February in particular was a busy month for venture funding. That month alone saw the second-, third- and fourth-largest rounds in Austin for the year. They included:

• A February Series C round in which autonomous surface vessels maker raised $600 million at a $4 billion valuation. led the round for the defense tech startup.
• Also in February, , which provides endpoint management, security and monitoring, raised $500 million in Series C extensions at a $5 billion valuation — more than doubling its value from just 12 months prior. The funding came in separate tranches led by and ’s , with participation from other investors.
• Robotics company in February raised $415 million in Series A financing led by�� and accelerator (A $520 million extension to that Series A was raised in February 2026, taking the total round to over $935 million.)

The findings correspond with Flager’s observations.

“A good chunk of the capital raised in Austin was driven by several large deals. Similar to what we saw across the U.S. in 2025, venture funding in Austin was more concentrated than it has been in the past,” he told Crunchbase News. “Roughly 38% of the capital deployed went to the top five venture financings in Austin. I believe the top 10 deals nationally accounted for more than 40% of the capital raised last year. We’ll see if this trend continues into 2026 and beyond. The start of the year suggests it will.”

, founding partner of , agrees, noting that from a dollars perspective, the surge in financings was driven by a handful of outsized capital-intensive deals in newer categories such as defense and deep tech.

“These companies require a combination of technology, land for manufacturing facilities, and talent for manufacturing tasks. Austin has unique skillsets for that,” he said. “It has a density of three things: talent in deep tech with , and many others moving to Texas in light of favorable business conditions with expertise in these industries; expansive land around Central Texas that is inexpensive, especially compared to California; and lower cost manufacturing-related labor especially given the surge in manufacturing jobs such as at Tesla in recent times.”

Burgeoning industries

Once upon a time, Austin was better known as home to software and CPG companies. And while those types of companies certainly still exist, a number of other industries are growing increasingly robust, as the local investors have pointed out.

As with many top tech markets, Flager said Austin has long been strong for application and infrastructure software, which is currently being challenged by AI. In his view, that talent has migrated to building “quality” vertical agentic software and AI-native businesses.

“We are seeing these companies grow quickly and build scale, while using less capital — which is exciting,” he added. “The domain experts who built and scaled application software companies here over the last two decades are spinning out to build the next generation of native AI businesses.”

The market overall is also broadening in interesting ways. Defense and autonomy have emerged as breakout categories, with Austin becoming one of the stronger markets in the country for dual-use and autonomous systems companies, noted Flager.

“The combination of software and hardware skills now in Texas, along with a business-friendly regulatory environment, has allowed Austin to take a leadership position in these important and developing markets,” he said. “Energy tech is also a natural fit given Texas’ grid scale and the surging power demands of AI infrastructure.”

Finally, robotics and advanced manufacturing are also gaining momentum, driven by deep engineering talent and the ability to scale manufacturing near Austin cost-effectively, allowing engineers, executives and other factory employees to coexist and collaborate in close proximity.

Srinivasan noted that his firm is seeing strong activity in vertical AI companies, or companies that serve vertical markets with AI that is tuned on specialized proprietary vertical data, often targeting the services and labor expenditures by their customers.

“These companies deliver ‘Services as Software’ with close to software gross margins and pricing models that are based more on usage and outcomes as opposed to the traditional seat-based models,” he said.

Srinivasan also expects the city to continue to see large funding deals in defense and deep tech, given the combination of local strengths and robust global demand for such products.

Continued momentum

Investors and companies continue to be drawn to Austin. In late December, San Francisco-based venture firm in the city. One of the firm’s founders, , also announced that he had personally moved to Austin. The firm’s other founder, , had lived and worked in the city since 2022.

In late March of this year, Musk to build two semiconductor factories totaling 100 million square feet in Austin to supply advanced chips for and Tesla. The venture, known as Terafab, aims to manufacture 1 trillion watts of computing power per year, he said. Media outlets valued the initiative at nearly

Also this week, Barcelona-based AI health tech startup announced it will open an office and hire in Austin.

CEO told Crunchbase News that with the company’s New York office already established, the next step was not just expansion, “but choosing the right place to build.”

“And we chose Austin for one reason above all: talent,” he said. “As an AI health tech company, our success depends on attracting exceptional people across engineering, data and life sciences. Austin has rapidly become one of the most competitive talent markets. The city is one of the fastest-growing in the United States. This brings together deep tech expertise, entrepreneurial energy and a growing concentration of healthcare innovation. Ideal for our goal of building an R&D hub. “

Coelho also points out that Biorce has witnessed a “trend” of people moving from the Bay Area to Austin, noting that “the quality of life has gained notoriety.”

“But for us, this isn’t about following a trend,” he added. “It’s about building where the best people are — and where they want to be.”

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• Texas Startup Funding Declines, Led By Dip In Austin-Area Investment
• Lower Costs, Laid-Back Lifestyle Continue To Draw Tech Companies To Austin, Texas
• The 10 Biggest Rounds Of February: Saronic And NinjaOne Lead Big Month
• NinjaOne Snags $5B Valuation In Massive $500M Round
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February was the biggest month on record for venture funding. And while the vast majority of that capital went to just three companies — , and — a whole host of under-the-radar startups also drew investor checks.

Among those that most piqued our interest: A phlebotomy robot, a company that aims to revive precision manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe with a small-business franchise model, and a health beverage made from seaweed. Let’s dive in.

$70M for robotic blood draws

If you’re squeamish about needles or blood, you might want to stop reading now.

This week, Dutch startup raised $70 million in Series B funding for its phlebotomy robots, which are designed to autonomously perform diagnostic blood draws.

Vitestro was founded in 2017 and has raised more than $104 million to date, . Its Series B investors include , and , among others.

The new funding will be used to advance its Autonomous Robotic Phlebotomy Device, to seek regulatory approvals in the U.S. and to scale commercialization.

Blood draws are one of the most routine and important processes in healthcare, investors noted, but have undergone little to no technical innovation, despite chronic industry staffing shortages.

Vitestro’s device is designed to be installed in phlebotomy departments and combines imaging technology, AI and advanced robotics to identify suitable veins for a blood draw, guide needle insertion and collect blood samples, according to the company.

“Vitestro is redefining one of the largest and most under innovated clinical workflows with a first-of-its-kind autonomous robotic platform for diagnostic blood collection addressing an enormous unmet global market need,” Dr. , co-founder and partner at Sonder Capital and former co-founder and CEO of and , said in a statement. “I believe this technology has the potential to establish a new standard of care, much as robotic surgery did in its early days.”

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$50M for a franchise model for precision manufacturing

Two of the hottest startup industries right now are defense and space tech. At the same time, domestic manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe, particularly for military and defense applications, has come under renewed focus amid global trade tensions and intensifying wars.

Against that backdrop, manufacturing startup said earlier this week that it raised a $50 million Series A, less than a year after its seed round. The London-based company says it plans to open 25 factories by the end of 2026 and launch into Germany, France and Ukraine.

Isembard makes technology to manufacture precision components that are used in the defense, aerospace, energy and robotics sectors. Interestingly, it operates as a franchise model that lets existing machine shops and new businesses use its proprietary software and AI system.

It noted that component manufacturing is a $1.8 trillion a year industry. Yet, 95% of production is done by small businesses. The typical owner of one of those small machine shops is more than 65 years old and 40% plan to retire within five years, according to the company.

led Isembard’s Series A investment, which included participation from��, , , , and individual investors , and .

“Isembard is redefining the process of owning and running a factory,” , managing partner at Union Square, said in a statement. “By embedding deep operational expertise into an agentic OS, MasonOS lowers the barrier to operating high-performance manufacturing businesses and enables a networked, capital-efficient path to scale. At a moment when demand for advanced manufacturing is accelerating and interest in SMB ownership is rising, Isembard brings both forces together.”

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$13M for seaweed beverages

While overall funding to food and beverage startups has plummeted since their pandemic-era heights, products that offer unique health benefits do still attract investor attention.

One recently funded company in that space is , a Torrance, California-based startup that makes wellness-oriented drinks from seaweed. The company secured $13 million in seed funding led by with participation from and .

Founded in 2019 by , Aqua Theon’s first product is OoMee, a seaweed-based beverage marketed as supporting gut health and satiety. Its star ingredient, agar-agar, has reportedly seen a surge in social media interest.

Beverages marketed as healthful or beneficial are to be a more than $192 billion market by the end of this year.�� Among funded startups, that has included a heavy emphasis on products that orient themselves around offering protein, fiber or an energy boost, a review of Crunchbase data shows.

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$6M for an email provider for AI agents

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Less than four years into the AI boom, AI agents are already asking for their own email addresses.

That’s the premise behind , a San Francisco-based startup that this week said it has raised $6 million in seed funding from a long list of investors to build the tech stack for software agents, starting with their inboxes.

“AI agents are already starting to function as virtual employees across industries,” , partner at , said in a statement. “These agents need their own identity and email is the heart of identity on the internet. Traditional identity services were not built with agentic use cases in mind, and AgentMail is building that part of the stack, starting with email.”

To that end, AgentMail said it’s launching its onboarding API to let AI agents get email addresses without human assistance.

“The next billion users of the internet will be AI agents,” AgentMail co-founder said in a statement. “We’re building infrastructure that treats agents as first-class citizens, starting with email. The demand is so intense that the agents themselves are finding us and signing up.”

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$1.3M for AI for wastewater treatment

, an AI software company that helps the wastewater industry manage complex systems and make critical decisions, raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding. The deal exemplifies a common theme among funded AI startups: Many operate in very niche industries and promise to automate process-heavy workflows.

Nyad said its tool is designed to help plant operators in the wastewater industry, which faces a looming labor shortage as nearly half of the sector’s U.S. workforce is expected in the next decade.

The round for the Birmingham, Alabama-based startup was led by and included participation from , , , , and angel investor .

Nyad was founded in 2024 by British entrepreneurs (CEO) and after the two reportedly experienced poor water quality during triathlon training in the U.K. They later moved the company to the U.S. after seeing early customer demand through pilot programs in the Birmingham area.

Nyad’s technology helps plant operators maintain compliance and troubleshoot issues. “Operators are the final line of defense for public health and the environment,” Szepietowski said in a statement. “As experience retires out of the industry, we need tools that support operators in the moment when decisions matter most.”

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• Startups Are Serving Up Drinks With Protein, Caffeine And A Shot Of Wellness

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The reality, however, looks far more diversified. Startups securing the largest rounds run the gamut from biotech to robotics to security and more. Obviously AI is the leading theme, but the pipeline of funded companies is anything but cookie-cutter.

Overall funding levels also look fairly healthy, with annual Series B funding moving steadily higher after hitting a low in 2023. This year is off to a strong start as well, as charted below.

Round counts are also holding up at a steady level, an encouraging indicator for those worried about capital concentration thinning the ranks of funded companies. It may be happening at late stage, but Series B is not so dramatically affected.

Investor favorites

Even so, a good chunk of Series B investment did go to a handful of favored startups.

Looking at rounds from the past six months, the largest was a $2 billion -led financing for , a developer of open foundation models founded in 2024 by former researchers.

Another standout was , which is developing oral treatments for obesity. The then year-old company raised $600 million in October. , an AI robotics startup, also raised $600 million in a November Series B led by ’s .

For a bigger-picture view, we used Crunchbase data to put together a list of 10 of the largest Series B recipients of the past six months.

Round sizes grow bigger

Another trend we’re seeing is that average round sizes are getting larger. So far in 2026, for instance, the average Series B is $68 million, which appears to be the highest on record.

As you can see charted below, the average size of a Series B round has been inching higher for a few years. It’s not as pronounced as what we’re seeing at later-stage, which continues to set fresh records for deal size. But still, investors are putting more capital into their largest deals.

Meanwhile, smaller Series B rounds are scarcer. From 2020 through 2023, for instance, there were typically about 150 rounds of between $1 million and $10 million each year. Last year, there were only 44 such rounds.

Still plenty of variety

While Series B investors may be consolidating their bets somewhat, they’re doing so across a wide range of sectors and technologies.

Per Crunchbase data, more than a quarter of Series B funding over the past six months has gone to healthcare and biotech startups. About 15% has gone to robotics and hardware-related investments.

Roughly half of Series B investment for the past six months also went to companies in AI-related categories across multiple industries. In addition, a majority of investment went to software-focused companies.

At this stage and typical size, one can assume investors are no longer making risky bets on unproven upstarts. To get to Series B requires some impressive technological edge, early traction, or both. And for most, they’re just getting started.

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

Venture investors’ thirst for AI isn’t close to quenched yet. That’s the takeaway from this week’s lineup of large U.S. funding rounds, which was mostly a mix of AI pure-plays and companies with a heavy focus on the technology.

The week’s largest round however, a $600 million financing for drone delivery provider Zipline, offered evidence that investors are also keen on platforms and technologies with applications in the physical world. The second-largest round, a $480 million seed deal for upstart AI lab Humans&, meanwhile, showed there’s also still appetite for ultra-ambitious newcomers.

1. , $600M, drones: Drone delivery unicorn Zipline it closed on over $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation from investors including , , and . South San Francisco, California-based Zipline also says it expects to expand into at least four new states this year, with initial plans to begin service in Houston and Phoenix.

2. , $480M, AI: Humans&, an AI lab working to apply the technology in ways that are centered “around people and their relationships with each other,” secured $480 million in seed funding. The company was founded in September by top researchers from , , , and .

3. , $300M, AI infrastructure: AI infrastructure startup Baseten reportedly $300 million with backing from , and . The financing set a $5 billion valuation for the 7-year-old, San Francisco-based company.

4. , $250M, medical AI: OpenEvidence, an AI platform for doctors, announced that it picked up $250 million in a Series D funding round that doubled its valuation to $12 billion. and co-led the round, which marks the fourth fundraise for the Miami-based startup in less than a year.

5. , $215M, rare earth magnets: San Marcos, Texas-based Noveon Magnetics, a manufacturer of sintered rare earth permanent magnets, it secured $215 million in Series C funding, including $200 million from . The money will go toward expanding the company’s rare earth magnet manufacturing capacity.

6. , $200M, AI infrastructure: AI networking infrastructure startup Upscale AI $200 million in Series A funding led by , and . The financing set a valuation of more than $1 billion for the Santa Clara, California-based company, which was founded less than two years ago.

7. (tied) , $150M, online tutoring: Language learning marketplace Preply raised $150 million in Series D funding led by . The financing reportedly sets a $1.2 billion valuation for the 14-year-old, Brookline, Massachusetts-based company.

7. (tied) , $150M, AI inference: Inferact, a startup founded by creators and maintainers of open-source LLM inference engine vLLM, announced its launch along with $150 million in initial funding. and led the financing, which set an�� $800 million valuation for the company.

7. (tied) , $150M, cybersecurity: Security provider Claroty picked up $150 million in Series F funding led by . The 11-year-old company, founded in Israel and now headquartered in New York, has raised close to $900 million in equity funding to date, per Crunchbase data.

10. , $115M, geothermal energy: Salt Lake City-based Zanskar, a startup applying AI to geothermal exploration, raised $115 million in Series C funding led by and joined by a long list of new and existing investors.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Jan. 17-23. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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Sure, it’d be wonderful to have autonomous machines adept at cleaning the house, harvesting and preparing food, running warehouses and performing a host of generally thankless and burdensome jobs. But must they look like us too?

For many startups, the answer to this question is “no.”

While humanoid robots startups like and have drawn headlines in recent months for big and flashy , an array of companies working on less-anthropomorphic designs have also secured considerable investment. These include four-legged models, AI-enabled appendages and skilled swimmers.

The non-humanoid bot startups getting funded

To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to assemble a sample list of 26 companies in the non-humanoid robot startup sector that have raised rounds in the past few quarters. It’s a varied lot, with focus areas ranging from farming to pool cleaning to massaging.

Bots around town

The list also features a mix of consumer-facing and industrial use cases, and we figured we’d start by highlighting the first category. It’s not that these bots are necessarily more useful, but rather that being out in public does make it a bit more fun to contemplate.

If recently funded startups have their way, some of the bots we see in action could be taking on more of the everyday drudgery currently shouldered by humans.

Cleaning is one of the big areas. China-based , which closed a $100 million Series E in April, makes robot vacuums and mops and touts its “,” LiDAR navigation and embedded dirt sensor. San Francisco-based , meanwhile, has raised $300 million since last year to iterate its vision of robots for household chores but has not yet released a prototype.

Pool-cleaning, an area already long-dominated by autonomous machines, is also set for an AI era upgrade, with two China-based companies pulling in rounds of $140 million each this year. , which closed its round in September, markets its $3,000 model as the “world’s first AI-powered 5-in-1 robotic pool cleaner.” Rival charges $1,700 for its Scuba Max Pro, which features smart pool mapping and a dedicated app.

And for those who need some pampering after a long day of not cleaning the pool, massage bot startup offers another spending option. The New York-based company secured $83 million in March to its customizable, “fully autonomous, AI-driven massage” offering.

Bots behind the scenes

While we may enjoy gawking at the still-unusual sight of a bot in public making a latte or delivering a restaurant meal, the bulk of funded companies in the non-humanoid bot space are working on models that will do their work behind the scenes.

Surgical robots have long been one of the more heavily funded areas, and this holds true for recent investment as well. The largest fundraiser on our list, U.K.-based , developer of a soft tissue surgical robot, has secured $1.1 billion in known funding to date, including a $200 million April . Israel-based , developer of a robotic platform for ophthalmic surgery, is also scaling up, closing a $125 million Series B in June.

On the industrial front, Swiss startup has raised more than $150 million to develop a four-legged bot optimized for inspections, capable of climbing stairs and avoiding obstacles.

And , which closed a $100 million Series C this summer, is working on appendage-like, AI-enabled robots that can be adapted for multiple industries.

Agtech also emerged as a favored area for investment. , based in Switzerland, has raised a couple hundred million for precision crop spraying, while Seattle-based is working on technology to kill weeds with lasers.

Won’t mistake it for a human

Of all the above-mentioned startups, none appear to be working on anything that could be remotely confused for a human, even from a distance. This seems logical, considering that so many jobs people have historically done don’t seem ideally suited to our particular form.

If all goes well with these non-humanoid robot startups, perhaps it would leave us humans free to spend more time doing the activities that do seem optimally suited to our form. Sitting on the couch would be high on this author’s list, though I’m sure others could find many more productive pursuits.

Related Crunchbase list:

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Silicon Valley lore is written in lines of code.

From to , the canonical 1,000-to-1 venture wins almost all originate from software that can ship worldwide at the speed of a browser refresh. When every extra copy costs pennies and your feedback loop is minutes, the playbook works beautifully — and keeps capital locked inside the digital realm.

That focus has left a trillion-dollar blind spot. The industries that actually make things — machining, logistics, chemicals, construction — still run on processes that look more 1995 than 2025. American manufacturing alone is a $2.5 trillion market. Capture even a sliver and you have true venture-scale upside.

So why has so little money flowed into deep tech for physical production? Because, until now, it broke the venture math. Hardware iterations took months, working capital strangled young balance sheets, and every customer integration felt bespoke.

Many, many investors carry institutional scars from hardware bets that never scaled, and those still serve as reminders to stay clear of the sector entirely.

But a platform shift underway in 2025 is changing that. AI tooling collapses the cost and complexity of deploying sophisticated software in factories and supply chains. Tasks that once demanded armies of on-site engineers can be handled by self-configuring AI agents; integrations measured in quarters shrink to days.

When those bottlenecks compress, the venture calculus flips — creating a new opportunity.

Four filters for the new wave

From my vantage point building — in short, our AI accelerates CAM programming for CNC machining, relieving a bottleneck that plagues the manufacturing sector globally — four criteria separate tomorrow’s winners.

1. A bleeding-neck problem: Customers must already be spending real money to solve urgent pain. If the CEO isn’t losing sleep, move on.
2. A massive, fragmented market: Deep tech only works when even a modest share builds a large business. The U.S. has tens of thousands of precision-machining shops; gain traction there, and you’re in the money.
3. Friction-free deployment: The product should be “plug and go,” not a three-month consulting project. AI-driven self-integration makes this plausible today; at CloudNC, we circumvent this problem by deploying into software that machine shops already use.
4. A durable moat: Proprietary data flywheels, years of specialist R&D, or regulatory approvals keep fast followers at bay. At CloudNC, we spent nearly a decade painstakingly building an AI on data we often had to capture ourselves, at our own factory.

Meet all four and you have the holy grail: A pure-software experience that delivers hard ROI in the physical world — and is devilishly hard to copy.

Consider precision machining. A single aerospace bracket may require dozens of tool-changes and thousands of lines of G-code, each tweak traditionally done by hand. At CloudNC our CAM Assist AI solution generates those instructions automatically, cutting programming time from days to minutes and unlocking latent machine capacity worth millions per plant.

Similar stories are emerging in , and — proof that software can now address pain points once written off as “too hard” or “too small.”

The pattern repeats: Identify an overlooked but ubiquitous bottleneck, digitize it end-to-end, then let AI handle messy real-world variation. When integrations become automatic and the product lives in the cloud, what looks like a hardware company on the shop floor behaves like SaaS on the income statement. Gross margins soar, sales cycles compress, and the outlier makes sense again.

Why the timing is now

The cost of spinning up domain-specific AI solutions is falling fast, and Western governments are pouring billions into reshoring advanced manufacturing. Policy incentives may mean early adopters are literally being paid to modernize.

So why the lack of competition among VCs — still — in this space? Well, most generalists lack the domain expertise to carry out due diligence on a factory-floor startup, and many founders still default to SaaS. That asymmetry creates an edge for those willing to understand, say, spindle utilization or PLC protocols.

If your thesis stops at the browser, you risk missing the next -sized win. Yes, deep tech takes homework, but that learning curve is the moat that keeps cap tables uncrowded.

Partner with specialist angels, recruit operators who have run plants, and prepare to engage on supply-chain dynamics. The funds that do will own territory their peers won’t even visit —��until the returns are obvious.

The internet ate the world’s information layer. AI is about to eat the control layer of physical production. Founders who turn months-long processes into minutes will define the next decade of venture. The only question is whether the capital will be ready when opportunity knocks — this time, literally on the factory door.

is co-founder and CEO of , a technology company whose mission is to enable single-click manufacturing. CloudNC has raised more than $75 million in venture capital from leading corporations and investment funds, including , and . Saville was recognized in the 2019 30 under 30 in Manufacturing & Industry, and 2023 Innovators U35.

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.

For what one might expect to be a sleepy week in mid-July, this turned out to be a fairly active period for venture dealmaking. Top fundraisers included , a developer of AI-enabled factories for aerospace and defense, and , a medical AI tool. This week also brought us official of the previously reported record-setting $2 billion seed round for .

1. , $260M, manufacturing: Hadrian, a Hawthorne, California-based developer of AI-enabled factories for aerospace and defense manufacturing, that it raised $260 million in a Series C round led by existing investors and . The financing also includes a factory expansion loan facility arranged by .

2. , $210M, medical information: OpenEvidence, a medical search and AI application for U.S. clinical healthcare providers, closed on $210 million in Series B funding. and led the financing for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company.

3. (tied) , $100M, publishing: Substack, the subscription-based publishing platform for independent writers, it raised $100 million in Series C funding, led by and . Founded in 2017, the San Francisco-based company has raised over $200 million to date, .

3. (tied) , $100M, artificial intelligence: AI search startup Perplexity has raised another $100 million at an $18 billion-plus valuation, according to the and . The new round for San Francisco-based Perplexity is an extension of its previous raise just two months ago at a $14 billion valuation, per Bloomberg, and seems to highlight the traction that the 3-year-old startup has had in challenging massive incumbents like in the search space. Perplexity recently launched a web browser to complement its AI search engine. The company has now raised $1.3 billion total, .

5. (tied) , $80M, appointments platform: Boulevard, a business management software platform for self-care businesses, including salons and spas, raised $80 million in a Series D funding led by . The round values Los Angeles-based Boulevard at about $800 million post-money.

5. (tied) , $80M, robotics: San Francisco-based Bedrock Robotics, a provider of hardware and software to enable heavy equipment for the construction industry to operate autonomously, it has emerged from stealth with $80 million in seed and Series A backing. ��1 led the Series A, and led the seed financing.

7. , $47.5M, fraud protection: Austin-based CertifID, a wire fraud protection platform for the real estate industry, announced it secured $47.5 million in a Series C round led by . The financing brings reported equity funding to date to $84 million.

8. , $47M, defense tech: Firestorm, a San Diego-based developer of manufacturing technology for unmanned aircraft systems, raised $47 million in a Series A round�� led by .

9. , $40M, business software: Unify, a developer of AI-enabled tools for companies and sales teams to grow their businesses, raised $40 million in a Series B round led by . Founded in 2023, San Francisco-based Unify has raised around $70 million to date, .

10. , $37M, healthcare fintech: Panacea Financial, a financial services provider for doctors and their practices, raised $37 million from in a Series B extension financing. Little Rock, Arkansas-based Panacea said it has processed more than $2 billion in loan applications since launching in late 2020.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of July 12-18. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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Over the past decade, South Korea has emerged as one of the world’s fastest-growing innovation ecosystems. Just 10 years ago, the country had around 200 scaleups — today, that number has grown tenfold to more than 2,100.

What’s behind South Korea’s scaleup boom?

This remarkable growth has been fueled in large part by strong government policies, which not only supported startup creation but also introduced clear KPIs around innovation. The most visible initiative is the Global Unicorn Project, launched in 2019 by the , which introduced structured categories such as “baby unicorns” and “pre-unicorns” as part of a national innovation roadmap.

These efforts have helped position Korea as Asia’s leading startup ecosystem outside of China and India.

According to the —��produced by my organization, in conjunction with and which you can here —��Korea is on track to overtake Japan in the number of scaleups (2,127 vs. 2,268).

When it comes to capital invested, it has already taken the lead — $76 billion vs. $46 billion — marking Korea as one of the few regional innovation powerhouses.

Catching up — and surpassing — peers

The contrast with other fast-growing ecosystems like Japan and Australia is particularly telling.

A decade ago, Australia had a slightly larger scaleup base than Korea (281 vs. 228), while Japan had twice as many (463). Today, Korea leads Australia by 35% (2,127 vs. 1,580) and is almost on par with Japan (2,127 vs. 2,268).

Not just Seoul …

In most countries, scaleups tend to agglomerate around a single innovation hub — typically the capital city — leaving regional ecosystems behind. Korea is only partially following this trend.

While Seoul still accounts for 73% of all Korean scaleups, this concentration level is comparable to more mature and distributed ecosystems globally. The Gyeonggi region already hosts 14% of scaleups, and other hubs such as Daejeon, Busan and Incheon are progressing steadily from standup to startup phase.

This indicates a narrowing regional innovation gap, supported by forward-looking policies that encourage localized growth and specialization.

A notable example is the R&D Special Zones program managed by the Korea Innovation Foundation. Originating with the Daedeok Research Complex in 1973, has evolved into a national science and tech backbone, now comprising five regional zones — Daedeok, Gwangju, Daegu, Busan and Jeonbuk — and 14 InnoTowns.

A center for global specialized R&D

This rapid growth hasn’t gone unnoticed.

As of 2025, 38 Fortune Global 500 companies have established an innovation presence in Korea, primarily through specialized R&D centers.

Why Korea? It has the trifecta:

1. A vibrant startup ecosystem;
2. A ; and
3. Deep specialization in frontier technologies such as robotics, AI, industrial automation and advanced manufacturing.

No wonder industrial giants such as — a global leader in complex shipbuilding — have joined the ranks of global corporations placing innovation boots on the ground in Korea.

In short

Korea isn’t just catching up — it’s becoming a global reference point for how smart national innovation strategies can deliver real economic transformation and global influence.

is chairman of and a professor at . He is a serial entrepreneur who has started three startups in his career, the last of which is , among the five Italian scaleups that have raised the largest amount of capital. He is recognized among the leading international experts in open innovation and has wide experience in setting up and managing open innovation projects — venture clients, venture builders, intrapreneurship, CVCs — with large multinational companies, as well as advising and training on this subject. Onetti has a column on () and several other tech blogs.

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The round also included investment from the likes of , and .

The Los Angeles-based startup is helping streamline the approach to satellites with the ability to mass produce spacecraft buses — the main body and structural component of satellites — to help meet increasing demand from customers like the .

“Apex’s approach to building spacecraft is key to America realizing its commercial and national security strategies in space,” said founder and CEO . “This successful raise accelerates our production, allowing Apex to expand its inventory ahead of demand to better enable the missions of our innovative customers, including defense primes, the U.S. government and some of the most exciting companies in the country.”

Space cash

Defense tech has seen increasing attention from investors, as more and more money has poured into the sector.

However, so far space tech investment has been slow. Only $1.7 billion was invested in VC-backed startups in Q1, per Crunchbase . Last year saw a total of $12.5 billion invested in space tech for the whole year.

However, the sector has seen some big rounds this year, including reusable rocket startup locking up a $260 million Series C and raising a $250 million Series D.

Related Crunchbase Pro list:

Related reading:

• Investors Once Again Star Gazing — Space Tech Funding Jumps
• Astranis Aims For The Stars With New $200M Round
• Space Tech Startup Lands $95M For Satellite Buses
• Stoke Space Looks To Blast Off With $260M Series C
• Defense Startup Epirus Secures $250M For Anti-Drone Tech

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