University of Texas spinout Apptronik, a builder of humanoid robots for Google DeepMind among others, on Wednesday announced that it re-opened its Series A to raise a total of $935 million for the round.
While the company did not disclose the valuation, TechCrunch separately learned that its post-money valuation is now about $5.3 billion.
Apptronik previously announced a $350 million Series A a year ago, but demand was so strong, according to the company, that it expanded the round to $415 million. Now it has raised another $520 million from earlier investors Google, Mercedes-Benz, and B Capital, alongside some new investors.
While it may sound like the startup is just selling off ever bigger chunks of itself at its Series A price, that’s not exactly what’s happening. The company says its investors have paid progressively more for shares in each subsequent extension — valuing it at roughly triple the initial Series A valuation of around $1.75 billion, according to PitchBook.
Why not just call this a Series B then? The company says it is still in early stages of development and was not actively seeking funding — rather it was dealing with inbound interest, says a source close to the company.
Fair enough. Another $520 million in a year, especially at a higher valuation, would be hard to turn away, particularly for tech as expensive to build as bipedal robots. Closely watched competitor Figure AI, for instance, had raised nearly $2 billion total since its 2022 founding before announcing a further $1 billion round last fall.
Part of the excitement over Apptronik is that it has partnered with Google DeepMind, as well as GXO and Mercedes-Benz, to deliver what the industry calls embodied AI — robots capable of perceiving their environment and taking physical action based on reasoning, rather than just following fixed instructions. The robot is being built for tasks like unloading trailers, picking warehouse inventory, and tending machinery, the company says.
Despite retaining the early-stage funding label, Apptronik is no Johnny-come-lately to this field. As we’ve previously reported, its humanoid work dates all the way back to 2013, three years before the company was formally founded. That’s when members of the Human Centered Robotics Lab from the University of Austin at Texas competed in the NASA-DARPA Robotics Challenge, working on a robot called Valkyrie. Since then, the space agency has maintained a partnership with Apptronik as the company has readied its own humanoid robot, named Apollo.