Tesla robotics construction rival Apptronik introduced a $350 million Sequence A investment spherical Thursday morning to scale the manufacturing of man-made intelligence-powered humanoid robots.
The investment spherical was once co-led by way of B Capital and Capital Manufacturing unit, and integrated backing from Google, CEO Jeff Cardenas mentioned in an unique Squawk Field interview Thursday.
Apptronik, a Texas-based robotics developer based in 2016, up to now raised $28 million and is recently operating on deploying what the corporate screams a “groundbreaking” humanoid robotic designed for business paintings named Apollo.
Jeff Cardenas, Apptronik Apollo and Yemi A.D. on the Featured Consultation: Robot Renaissance: The Daybreak of Humanoid Innovation as a part of SXSW 2024 Convention and Fairs held on the Hilton Austin on March 14, 2024 in Austin, Texas. (
Mike Jordan | Sxsw Convention & Fairs | Getty Photographs
“What’s happening in robotics is robots, with the power of AI, are becoming much more versatile,” Cardenas mentioned. “Now we’re getting these robots out into the world in a pretty big way and scaling them up and going from industry and into the home in the future.”
The untouched investment will permit the corporate to scale its robotic construction to doubtlessly cope with packages like production and healthcare. The robots will probably be educated one after the other from people on repetitive duties, Cardenas mentioned, earlier than they start integrating into human time.
Apptronik has partnered with NASA and NVIDIA as it really works on iterations of robots that rival the ones of Elon Musk’s Tesla. The corporate has evolved 15 robot methods, together with NASA’s humanoid robotic Valkyrie.
“The target price is for these robots to be less than the price of a car, so we’ve been working over the years, we’re on our ninth iteration of human robot,” Cardenas mentioned. “These robots are going to get much more affordable over time.”
The corporate may be operating with Google DeepMind to paintings on growing the AI riding the robotics era.
The Tesla Bot humanoid robotic of Tesla ”Optimus” is displayed on the 2023 Global Synthetic Understanding Convention in Shanghai, China, July 6, 2023.
Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Photographs
Tesla has additionally moved into the fast-evolving humanoid robotics trade with the Tesla Optimus robotic. In step with Goldman Sachs, the worldwide marketplace for humanoid robots may just succeed in $38 billion by way of 2035.
“I think we’re right there in the race,” Cardenas mentioned. “I think what this round represents is that our investors are really backing us and think that we have a real shot at winning this race.”
