Apptronik, a University of Texas spin-out that was quietly building humanoid robots before it became quite so fashionable, on Thursday announced a $350 million Series A round of financing. B Capital and Capital Factory co-led the round, which also featured participation from Google, whose DeepMind division is partnering with Apptronik to deliver embodied AI for bipedal robots.
“What 2025 is about for Apptronik and the humanoid industry is really demonstrating useful work in these applications with these initial early adopters and customers,” CEO Jeff Cardenas tells TechCrunch. “And then true commercialization and scaling happening in 2026 and beyond. That’s what this raise is designed to do.”
The Austin-based startup had raised a relatively modest $28 million combined prior to this round. Cardenas says the previous goal was to generate more revenue than money raised – a goal he says the eight-year-old startup achieved during that time. That revenue came by way of pilot deals — including with Mercedes and GXO Logistics — and by selling robots outright. For now, however, the goal of generating more revenue than fundraising is going to have to go on-hold for a while.
Apptronik’s humanoid work dates all the way back to 2013, three years prior to its founding. It was then that members of the University of Austin at Texas’s Human Centered Robotics Lab competed in the NASA-DARPA Robotics Challenge, an effort that centered around a humanoid robot called Valkyrie. Since then, the space agency has maintained a partnership with Apptronik as the company has readied its own generation of humanoids, including its current humanoid, Apollo.
Cardenas points to that decade-plus of humanoid experience as a primary differentiator between Apptronik and competitors like Figure, 1X, and Tesla. Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics have long histories, as well, but Apptronik is a seasoned veteran in the category compared to much of the competition.
Google DeepMind
That history may explain why Google’s DeepMind AI team has been working with Apptronik to build robot behavioral models. Their “strategic partnership” is similar in nature to others in the industry. Last week, Boston Dynamics announced a tie-up with The Robotics & AI institute. That followed a similar deal between the Spot-maker and Toyota Research Institute that’s aimed at improving how robots learn.
All are indicators of a much bigger trend, including OpenAI’s multiple deals in the space. The ChatGPT-maker has invested in both 1X and Figure. Last August, Figure announced that it would further leverage OpenAI models to develop natural speech conversations for its own 02 robot, though last week, the outfit announced new plans; going forward, it will move all of its AI development in-house.
“We found that to solve embodied AI at scale in the real world, you have to vertically integrate robot AI,” Figure CEO Brett Adcock told TechCrunch last week. “We can’t outsource AI for the same reason we can’t outsource our hardware.”
Apptronik may ultimately make the same choice, but for now, a Google DeepMind partnership makes far more sense for the startup than the additional funding required to build bespoke humanoid AI models in-house. “We believe that right now, Google is at the top of the game, and building some of the best models in the world,” Cardenas says.
Putting robots to work
Scaling and production are the magic words for Apptronik’s A round. Apptronik’s current headcount is just north of 170 people, and it’s planning a 50% increase over the next year.
Still, Cardenas is pragmatic about timelines in a category that can be fast to overpromise and underdeliver. Cardenas tells TechCrunch that Apptronik has yet to move beyond the pilot stage with any of its partnerships. For all of the excitement around humanoids, it’s still key for companies to take a measured approach to the category, addressing things like safety concerns and reliability prior to scaling the technology in a meaningful way.
In the meantime, the company has a handful of ongoing pilots, including Mercedes, which makes for a natural choice. Automotive manufacturing has been the leading use case for these kinds of pilots, requiring tote moving and other manual tasks on the factory floor. Boston Dynamics has similarly been working with its parent company, Hyundai; Figure has deployed robots with BMW; and Tesla’s Optimus will eventually get to work on the company’s own EVs.
Bringing it all back home
Like many of its rivals, Apptronik is also looking for ways to put Apollo to work outside of factories and warehouses. The day could arrive when these robots come home to help with groceries, cook, fold laundry, and other tasks buyers might want to offload onto an automaton. Cardenas is even more excited about age tech as an important avenue for advanced robotics. As the population ages and more older adults prefer to live independently, humanoids could eventually help.
“The holy grail for me is [age-tech],” says Cardenas. “As humans,” he says he asks himself, “where could we apply this technology that improves the human condition?”
The holy grail will have to wait, however.
For now, Apptronik, like most humanoid manufacturers, is focused on industry. Factories and warehouses are a good first step, as corporations have the money and other resources required for pilots. Scaling manufacturing for these projects will continue to drive the price point down, but as it stands, the systems are far too expensive for the home – or even care facilities – to be a practical route. Apollo’s target price is below $50,000, says Cardenas. But Apptronik isn’t there yet.
“We’re in the window where the economics now make sense,” says Cardenas. “And we know how to get to much more affordable systems.”
