Key Points:
- UK robotics startup Humanoid raised a $152 million Series A round at a post-money valuation of $1.35 billion.
- The round makes Humanoid Europe’s first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn, bringing its total funding to $270 million.
- German industrial giant Schaeffler ordered 1,000 HMND 01 wheeled robots to automate its global manufacturing plants.
- Bosch partnered with the startup as its primary manufacturer to support production of up to 100,000 units over five years.
A major capital injection into Europe’s burgeoning technology ecosystem has established the continent’s first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn. London-based hardware and artificial intelligence startup Humanoid secured a massive $152 million Series A funding round, driving its post-money valuation to an unprecedented $1.35 billion. This Humanoid Series A Funding milestone highlights a powerful, industry-wide acceleration of investment in “physical AI” companies, as global manufacturers, retailers, and logistics conglomerates scramble to deploy automated machinery to combat persistent, long-term labor shortages.
The completed Series A round brings the two-year-old startup’s total capital raised to an impressive $270 million, establishing a highly robust cash buffer to fund its upcoming commercial scaling phase. Deep-tech venture capital firm Prime Movers Lab led the massive investment round, which also secured strategic capital contributions from prominent global industrial and financial giants. Notable participating backers include German engineering powerhouses Schaeffler and Bosch, Taiwanese financial services firm Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures, the private investment arm of the Arnault family’s LVMH luxury group.
The company plans to deploy the $152 million in new capital to accelerate the development of its next-generation hardware platforms and begin the mass manufacturing of its flagship bipedal-wheeled robot, the HMND 01. Developed in near-record time since the company’s inception, the versatile industrial robot has already completed nine successful proof-of-concept pilot projects across various warehouse and factory environments. The bipedal-wheeled design offers a highly practical compromise, providing the payload stability and high-speed transit of wheeled bases with the dual-armed manual dexterity needed to operate in human-built work environments.
This physical versatility has already translated into major, high-volume commercial contracts that surpass standard pilot trials. Alongside the funding announcement, the startup secured a massive, definitive purchase agreement from German automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler to deliver 1,000 HMND 01 units. This represents one of the largest single commercial orders in the history of the humanoid robotics industry. The industrial supplier plans to deploy the thousands of robots progressively across its global manufacturing network to automate highly repetitive, physically demanding parts-sequencing and internal transport tasks.
To support the massive manufacturing scale required to fulfill these large-scale corporate contracts, the startup has partnered with industrial manufacturing giant Bosch. Under a newly established production agreement, Bosch will serve as the primary manufacturing partner, leveraging its extensive global factory footprint and supply chain networks to build out a production capacity of up to 100,000 units over the next five years. This industrial backing removes a major bottleneck for the young startup, ensuring it can scale up delivery volumes rapidly without incurring the massive capital costs of building its own factories.
The brain guiding these physical machines is the company’s proprietary, highly advanced artificial intelligence software platform, KinetIQ. Operating on a sophisticated four-layer software architecture, the AI platform enables coordinated, multi-robot operations across a single warehouse floor. The system utilizes advanced imitation learning and large-scale pre-training data to teach the robots complex manual manipulation tasks. This advanced software allows the machines to operate in real-time at over 80% of human operational speed, allowing them to integrate seamlessly into active logistics workflows.
This software-hardware integration is closely coupled with a series of high-level strategic partnerships across the global technology ecosystem. The startup has established direct software and systems integrations with enterprise resource planning leader SAP, semiconductor giant Nvidia, and industrial automation titan Siemens. By linking its KinetIQ platform directly with these established corporate networks, the company can deploy its robots into existing enterprise software environments with minimal custom programming, drastically reducing the onboarding time and integration costs for new corporate clients.
The company is moving rapidly to transition its prototype systems from laboratory environments to active commercial deployments. Management plans to begin deploying the first wave of active beta robots directly to customer industrial sites during the fourth quarter of the year. These early commercial pilots will focus heavily on high-density environments across manufacturing, logistics, and retail distribution centers, providing engineers with millions of data points on operational durability, battery thermal management, and human-robot collaboration safety in real-world scenarios.
The successful creation of Europe’s first humanoid unicorn marks a critical milestone in the global battle to dominate physical artificial intelligence. Historically, the United States and China have captured the vast majority of robotics venture capital, with U.S.-based companies like Figure AI and Apptronik raising billions of dollars. However, the European hardware ecosystem is rapidly gaining ground, fueled by massive, multi-billion-dollar rounds. In June, German competitor NEURA Robotics secured up to $1.4 billion at a $7 billion valuation, proving that European developers have the capital and industrial backing to challenge global market leaders.
Ultimately, the historic $152 million Series A funding round and the $1.35 billion valuation demonstrate that humanoid robots are rapidly transitioning from science experiments into indispensable commercial realities. By pairing its bipedal-wheeled HMND 01 robot with Bosch’s massive manufacturing capacity, a 1,000-unit commercial order, and a sophisticated multi-robot AI platform, the London-based startup has established a robust blueprint for industrial automation. As the first wave of commercial pilots launches in the fourth quarter, the success of these systems will determine whether physical AI can successfully solve the global labor shortage.
