The financing is the largest-ever Series A round for a humanoid-first robotics company in Europe, the company said.

UK-based AI and robotics company Humanoid has secured a $152m Series A financing round at a post-money valuation of $1.35bn.

The funding was led by Prime Movers Lab, a venture capital firm focused on investments in breakthrough scientific start-ups, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital and Aglaé Ventures – the investment firm of LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault.

The financing represents the largest-ever Series A for a humanoid-first robotics company in Europe, according to Humanoid, and brings its total funding to date to $270m.

“In just two years, we’ve gone from an idea to becoming Europe’s first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn, partnered with some of the world’s leading industrial companies and built one of the strongest pipelines in the industry,” said CEO and founder Artem Sokolov.

“This funding gives us the resources to move even faster and to turn humanoid robots from breakthrough technology into everyday industrial tools.”

The 2024-founded company builds humanoid robots for industrial use in ways that are “commercially viable, scalable and safe”, it said. It employs more than 250 people between London, Boston, Vancouver and San Diego.

“Humanoid robotics will be one of the defining technologies of the next decade, reshaping how commercial and industrial work gets done. We expect the field to consolidate around a handful of category leaders across the US, Europe and China,” said Zia Huque, general partner at Prime Movers Lab.

Humanoid said the new capital would be used to fund its next phase of growth, accelerate commercial deployments and business expansion, and further develop its wheeled robots and related proprietary AI platform, ‘KinetIQ’.

According to the company, it has ongoing partnerships with Fortune 500 companies such as SAP, Nvidia, Bosch and Siemens, and recently secured an agreement with Schaeffler for the large-scale deployment of thousands of humanoid robots in manufacturing environments.

“By combining our decades of industrial expertise and manufacturing excellence with Humanoid’s breakthrough physical AI platform, we are actively backing one of the most exciting frontiers in technology,” said Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO of Schaeffler.

Bosch CTO Mathias Pillin said that his company would “act as Humanoid’s contract manufacturing partner while also providing strategic consulting and technical expertise in hardware design, production and supply chain”.

Meanwhile, Asian corporate giants have made significant moves around robotics in recent days. Samsung Electronics is establishing a new robotics division, while Hyundai Motor Group is acquiring full control of Boston Dynamics.

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