Newsletter #78

This Week's Good Reads

NVIDIA - NVIDIA Isaac ROS 5.0 Advances Agentic, Open Source Robotics Development - Isaac ROS 5.0 adds agent-ready workflows, open-source libraries and support for ROS Lyrical and Ubuntu 24.04, bringing GPU-accelerated perception and deployment tools closer to the ROS developer ecosystem. NVIDIA
Google Research - Bypassing inference bottlenecks: Accelerating complex AI search with Retrieve-for-Train - Google trains a compact diffusion retriever offline with reinforcement learning to generate diverse, grounded search-result sets in one non-autoregressive pass, reporting a 12-20x inference speedup over autoregressive alternatives. Google Research
Figure - F.02 Decommission - As Figure expands its F.03 fleet, it retired F.02 robots by training a simulation policy from stunt references to make autonomous jumps into a Finnish electric-arc furnace, protecting proprietary hardware without consuming engineering time needed for the next platform. Figure

Robotics and AI Companies Funding

Pre-seed / Seed

Extend Robotics - £2.6M, Pre-A round led by Skyworks Venture Capital Fund, Neo Ventures, Zip Capital. Extend Robotics Result-as-a-Service model charges manufacturers for completed work, with Extend Robotics carrying cycle-time and task-success risk.
Aligator - $1.2M, seed round led by Qatar Development Bank, Next Ventures. Aligator is building AI agents that take on the operational work of public relations.
Revnu (P26) - $3M, seed round led by NPIF II - PXN Equity Finance, PXN Group, Y Combinator, identity.vc 🏳️‍🌈 Backing LGBTQ+ Founders, InvestorX. Revnu (P26) AI agents run outbound, ads and search marketing for growing businesses, with humans approving the work.
Bodhium Labs - $3.5M, pre-seed round led by Streamlined, Long Journey. Bodhium Labs is building an AI simulation and testing layer that lets marketers and go-to-market teams evaluate content and tactics before deployment.
Unveilr AI - Undisclosed, pre-seed round backed by ajvc. Unveilr AI helps brands become part of the shortlist inside AI-generated answers, then turns that visibility into work on content, technical performance and brand authority.
Photon - $4.5M, seed round backed by Gradient, A*, vercel, HSG, Z Fellows, Llama Ventures, Karman Ventures. Photon lets developers put agents inside channels people already use, including iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram and SMS.
Aleph - $7.5M, pre-seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, BoxGroup, Reveille VC, Constellation, Forward Deployed Venture Capital, Valkyrie, Discipulus Ventures, maniac ventures. Aleph is developing autonomous surgical robots that learn tasks from demonstrations and improve through experience.
MAVI - $4 million, seed round led by Harlem Capital. Founded by Molly Liu and Aman Puri in 2023, the company focuses on mid- to senior-level professionals who can review automated work and take responsibility for the numbers.
Kyndred - Undisclosed, Pre-Seed round backed by Early Game Ventures. Kyndred combines real-time Live2D animation with lip-sync, body language and persistent memory, aiming to make conversations feel continuous across sessions.
Kanu AI - $11.7 million, seed round led by Trilogy Equity Partners, Speedrun, BMW i Ventures, Accel. Kanu AI turns demonstrated work into operational software that runs inside a customer's cloud.
Beltic - $7.3 million, Seed round led by Norwest, Restive Ventures, Oxford Seed Fund, Collide Capital. Beltic verifies agents, the entities behind them and their authority to act across payment rails.
Tangent Robotics - $4.5 million, pre-seed round led by Fly Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Logos, Sparked Ventures. Tangent Robotics combines robot hands, light-based touch sensing and machine learning to teach fine manipulation.
Destro - $8M, seed round backed by Base10 Partners, Bonfire Ventures, CoFound, Unshackled Ventures. The software connects two layers: Vision directs robot actions using vision-language-action models, while Mothership coordinates workers, carts and trucks.
Rig Security - $12 million, seed round led by Ten Eleven Ventures, Brightmind Partners, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, Ami Luttwak. Rig Security is building an identity security platform for an environment where employees, machine accounts and AI agents share permissions across applications.

Series A

Novele - $17M, Series A round backed by Boisei Labs, Locke Health, Arup Ventures, Barton Malow. Novele BoardOS software predicts and controls electricity use in real time, while EnergyBoard adds distributed storage for occupied buildings.
Daptic - $15M, Series A round led by Canvas Ventures, IA Ventures, 8VC. Daptic brings regulatory requirements into product design, while engineers still have room to act on them.
Arivihan Technologies - $10M, Series A round backed by Accel, Prosus Ventures, GSF. Arivihan Technologies delivers school lessons, instant doubt solving and AI-driven study plans without live teachers.
doxx.net - $38M, Series A round backed by Andreessen Horowitz, ANIMO Ventures, focal. doxx.net combines encrypted meshes, peer-to-peer communications and DNS threat protection.
enso - $15M, Series A round led by MoreTech Ventures, NFX, Phenomen Ventures, Gil Hirsch. enso AI agents research how search engines, social feeds and AI answers decide what gets seen, then test ways to reach buyers.
Halluminate - $30M, Series A round backed by Oak HC/FT, Y Combinator, Orange Collective, Heavybit, Financial Technology Partners / FT Partners. Halluminate builds financial-work benchmarks and reinforcement-learning environments for frontier AI labs.
Parakeet Health - $10M, Series A round backed by Canvas Ventures, Blank Space Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures, HMC INQ. Parakeet Health builds conversational AI for patient access: turning referrals and incoming enquiries into outreach, scheduling and follow-up across voice, SMS, email, web and fax.
Volantis Semiconductor - $88M, Series A round led by Lachy Groom, Abstract Ventures, John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic Capital, Susa Ventures, Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao, Sholto Douglas. Volantis Semiconductor is developing optical links between compute and memory to reduce the inference tradeoff between model size and response speed.
ai3Bio - $48M, Series A round led by UPMC Enterprises, Ziff Capital Partners, Cockrell Interests, LLC, Tanis Ventures. ai3Bio uses an AI discovery platform to identify targets for selectively removing disease-driving Th17 cells.
erad - $22 million, Series A round led by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), SVC, 500 Global, S60 Ventures, anb capital, Conjunction Capital, Arāya Ventures, Khwarizmi Ventures, Nuwa Capital, AlJazira Capital الجزيرة كابيتال, Oraseya Capital, Joa Capital. erad uses cash-flow data and proprietary AI models to assess financing risk for SMEs in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
OuterSignal - $22M, Series A round led by Long Journey, Abstract Ventures, BAM Ventures, Top Shelf Ventures, SuperAngel.Fund, AME Cloud Ventures, David Heath, Rohan Shah, Alex Haro, Emery Wells, Kim Perell, Michael Preysman, Michael Perry, Kendrick Nguyen, Raad Michael Mobrem, Zach Sims, Sahil Bloom, Steve Carroll, Michael Loeb, Rich Vogel, Troy Osinoff, Sahil Bhaiwala, James Beshara, Nik Sharma, OpenSky Ventures, The Family Fund & Founder Community. OuterSignal turns commerce and CRM data into customer segments, VIP alerts and personalized campaigns.
Ascerta - $18M, Series A round led by Dell Technologies Capital, Hitachi Ventures, BGV, Wipro Ventures. Ascerta reports that customers have achieved 47% better AI ROI, launched agents 24% faster and reduced wasted AI spend by 86%.
Restate - $20 million, Series A round backed by Singular, Redpoint Ventures, Capital One Ventures. Singular led the Series A, with Redpoint Ventures and Capital One Ventures participating.
Rayon.design - €10 million, Series A round led by Partech, Northzone, Foundamental, Seedcamp. Interior design teams often have to move between CAD drawings, mood boards, specifications and furniture schedules.
Arcade.dev - $60 million, Series A round led by Cisco Investments. AI agents can edit records, close tickets and trigger workflows.
LOMBY Inc. - 387 million, Series A round backed by （株）マーキュリアインベストメント, DRONE FUND, Suzuki Motor Corporation Official, Tama Shinkin Bank-SNETI Investment Limited Partnership, Canal Ventures, Nabtesco Technology Ventures. The model has a concrete retail test: LOMBY Inc.
IPercept - $16.5 million, Series A round backed by Isogon Ventures, 2150, Luminar Ventures, RunwayFBU, J12, AI.FUND, Backstage Invest AB. IPercept uses a controller-independent device to monitor industrial-machine health and performance.
Atomic - $12.5 million, Series A round led by Klass Capital, Madrona, Alumni Ventures, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners. Atomic's supply-chain agents automate planning, purchasing and inventory-risk workflows alongside existing ERP systems.
Marble - €6.5 million, Series A round backed by Smartfin, ADNEXUS, Passion Capital, 42CAP, Hexa. The Paris company gives bank and fintech compliance teams an open-source, no-code platform for fraud and anti-money-laundering detection.

Series B

GMI Cloud - $223M, Series B round backed by ARCHIV, NVIDIA, DSC Investment, Trend Micro, KB Investment, KYOBO Life Insurance 교보생명, KT. GMI Cloud says contracted ARR now exceeds $600M, more than nine times its end-2025 level.
LEBO ROBOTICS Inc. - Undisclosed, Series B round backed by Abies Ventures Fund I, L.P., たましま地域活性化投資事業有限責任組合, Abies Ventures, Aizawa Asset Management Co., Ltd. LEBO ROBOTICS Inc.
株式会社キビテク - 600M, Series B round backed by JIC Venture Growth Investments, Sumisho Venture Partners, JIC Venture Growth Fund No. 2, SVP Open Innovation Fund No. 1. HATS connects robots across manufacturers with warehouse and manufacturing systems, elevators and AI.
Miter - $40 million, Series B round backed by Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Coatue Management. Construction work happens on site, but the records behind payroll, job costs and compliance often arrive in disconnected systems.
Reco - $55 million, Series B round backed by AT&T, Forestay Capital, Quadrille Capital. AI agents can inherit access faster than security teams can map it.
Tiny Health - $33 million, Series B round led by B Capital, Spero Ventures, TheVentureCity, Overwater Ventures, Black Opal Ventures, Denver Ventures, Pave Health Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, PariPassu. Tiny Health in-house bioinformatics pipeline reads gut and vaginal microbiome samples using shotgun metagenomic sequencing.

Series C and beyond

PaleBlueDot AI - $200M, Series C round led by ComputeCore, B Capital. PaleBlueDot AI gives customers dedicated clusters for large or specialized workloads, on-demand marketplace capacity from supply partners, and serverless inference for developers and enterprises.
Metaview - $60M, Series C round backed by Insight Partners, GV (Google Ventures), Intrepid Growth Partners, Seedcamp, Vertex Ventures US, Plural, Garuda Ventures. Metaview builds AI recruiting agents that carry context across sourcing, applications, screening and interview intelligence.
CScale - $145M, Series C round led by Atreides Management, LP, Valor Equity Partners, Premji Invest, Sutter Hill Ventures, Maverick Silicon, NVIDIA, Intel Capital. CScale is building optical interconnect for AI accelerators that need to communicate continuously across racks.

Growth / Strategic / Other

HappyCo - Undisclosed, Funding round backed by Lone View Capital. HappyCo began with property inspections and now connects maintenance, asset-management and sourcing workflows for multifamily operators.
Supabase - $150M, financing round backed by GIC, CapitalG, IronArc Ventures, Square Peg. Supabase open-source Postgres platform gives developers databases, authentication, file storage, edge functions, real-time subscriptions and vector search in one backend.
Biotia - $9M, financing round backed by DigitalDx Ventures, EGB Capital, Tim Barry, Clive Fields. Biotia sequences pathogens and uses machine learning to support infection identification and drug-resistance reporting.
OptimizeGEO.ai - Undisclosed, Funding round backed by Michael Kassan. OptimizeGEO.ai says it now serves more than 100 brands across 20 countries.
Proximal - $15M, funding round led by General Catalyst, SV Angel, Chemistry, Diede V., Liam Fedus, Kevin Weil, Erik Bernhardsson. Proximal turns raw agent traces and artifacts from human workflows into evaluations that expose capability gaps.
General Intuition - $220M, financing round backed by Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, LP, Seven Seven Six 7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣, Point72, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Coalition Capital. General Intuition MIRA research demo runs in Rocket League.
Jeeves - $110 million, financing round backed by CoinFund, AllianceBernstein, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, CRV, GIC, Global PayTech Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Vista Equity Partners, Y Combinator, Financial Technology Partners / FT Partners, Wintermute Ventures, SquareOne Capital, Zach Abrams, Sean Neville, Henri Stern, Prabhakar Reddy, Karan Shah, Sam Broner, Ricardo Marino. The financial platform combines corporate cards, spend management and cross-border payments.
Aurachain - Undisclosed, funding round backed by Evolution Equity Partners. Aurachain connects compliance, risk and fraud work in governed workflows that preserve human accountability for high-stakes decisions.
Relay - $36 million, financing round backed by International Paper, Harmonic Growth Partners, Thayer Investment Partners, G2 Venture Partners, Wind River Ventures. Relay combines purpose-built radios with cloud AI to turn frontline conversations into records, actions and workflows.
Inbolt - €11 million, funding round backed by Shift4Good, Bridges Climate Transition Partners, BNP Paribas Développement, Ora Global. Inbolt combines 3D vision with a hardware-agnostic AI layer so factory robots can adjust control loops in real time.
KNOWIN - RMB 500 million, financing round backed by Loyal Valley Capital, Nanshan Strategic Emerging Industry Investment, Walden International. KNOWIN is developing an embodied-AI system that uses synthetic training data, a world model and action planning for changing household tasks.
Xieyue Intelligence - Undisclosed, Angel+ round backed by Linear Capital. Xieyue Intelligence is developing a model that keeps listening and replanning while a home robot executes a task.
EliseAI - $350 million, financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Sapphire Ventures, Navitas Capital. Housing and healthcare staff spend enormous time coordinating routine work.
Dodge AI - $2.65 million, Funding round backed by Accel, Google AI Futures Fund, NewBuild Venture Capital, Antler, Schema Ventures. Dodge AI deploys agents to diagnose incidents and change requests across ERP and CRM systems.

Robotics and AI News

Euronews - Humanoid robots: China builds them, but Germany could supply the joints and hands - The article frames the humanoid race as a split supply chain: China is scaling robot production while German specialists remain well positioned in high-precision components such as actuators, joints and hands. Euronews
Euronews - Five million robots now work in factories as humanoid hype faces reality check - IFR data puts the operational industrial-robot stock at about 5.08 million after 9% annual growth, grounding the humanoid debate in the much larger installed base of conventional factory automation. Euronews
Data Center Knowledge - AMD's World Labs Deal Signals Shift to Physical AI - AMD agreed to acquire World Labs for $8.2B, tying its compute roadmap more directly to spatial-intelligence models that can represent and reason about three-dimensional environments. Data Center Knowledge
International Federation of Robotics - Global Sales of Professional Service Robots Surge 24% - Professional service-robot shipments reached almost 250,000 units in 2025; transport and logistics led with 117,500 units, while surgical-robot sales rose 57%. International Federation of Robotics
TechCrunch - Can Safeworld convince people that GenAI robots won't hurt them? - Safeworld emerged from stealth with more than $12M to test robot-control systems in simulated workplaces populated by realistic human models, positioning independent safety evaluation as deployment infrastructure for generative-AI robots. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - Reflection debuts Beam, an open-weight AI model to rival Chinese models at lower compute cost - Reflection AI launched Beam, an open-weight frontier model it says approaches leading Chinese open models on reasoning benchmarks while requiring substantially less compute. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - OpenAI will start watermarking ChatGPT's text in the EU - OpenAI says it will add an invisible watermark to ChatGPT and Codex text generated in the EU to meet the AI Act's transparency requirements. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - OpenAI launches GPT-6.1 Sol, says it nearly matches GPT-6 Astra and costs less - OpenAI introduced GPT-6.1 Sol as a lower-cost model that it says nears GPT-6 Astra performance, extending its rapid model-tier iteration for developers. TechCrunch

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