Eka Robotics Raises $150 Million Series A at $1.45 Billion Valuation for AI Grasping
Updated
Updated · TechCrunch · Oct 20
Eka Robotics Raises $150 Million Series A at $1.45 Billion Valuation for AI Grasping
1 articles · Updated · TechCrunch · Oct 20
Summary
$150 million in Series A funding values Eka Robotics at $1.45 billion post-money, giving the MIT- and DeepMind-founded startup fresh backing to commercialize its manipulation technology.
Eka says its robots can pick about 1,500 objects an hour weighing up to 1 kilogram, versus roughly 600 for a human, while achieving more than 95% reliability.
That performance comes from a vision-force-action model and a force-sensitive gripper, with founders arguing touch and force—not vision alone—solve the final millimeters of grasping.
Simulation is central to the approach: Eka says it can generate thousands of hours of robot experience in minutes through reinforcement learning rather than relying on human demonstration data.
The company is already running secretive industrial pilots in pick-and-place and wire handling, but still must prove its hardware can survive real assembly lines for a year and expand beyond those tasks.