Eka Robotics raises $150M and reaches a $1.45B valuation

In short: Eka Robotics raised $150 million in Series A funding, valuing the company at $1.45 billion, as it shows off a robot arm that can pick up many different objects reliably.

What happened

Eka Robotics, a startup founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, announced a $150 million Series A funding round. The round values the company at $1.45 billion after the investment. It was led by venture firms a16z and F-Prime.

The company is focused on a hard problem in robotics, picking up objects in the real world. According to TechCrunch, Eka’s robot arm can pick up around 1,500 objects per hour that weigh up to 1 kg, and the company says it succeeds more than 95% of the time. One example described in the report is handling a raspberry without crushing it.

Eka’s approach puts a lot of emphasis on “force” and touch, not just cameras. In simple terms, it is like the difference between grabbing something while only looking at it, versus grabbing it while also feeling it with your fingers. The company also uses a physics simulator (a realistic video game style training world) to practice many grasps quickly, instead of relying mostly on people demonstrating tasks.

Why it matters

If robots can reliably pick up many different items without needing lots of reprogramming, they become more useful in warehouses and factories, where products and packaging change often. Eka is already running pilot projects with industrial customers, but it still needs to prove the system can run for long periods on real assembly lines.

Source: TechCrunch AI