We enter a golden age of startups – not only because of artificial intelligence

When Seth Winterut left his function in Gements to help launch Eclipse in 2015, Robotics was on his mind. Or more specifically, the number of emerging companies in the early stage that was struggling to launch due to a lack of attention.

“These teams have just ended after the doctorate in Waterloo, CMU, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and robots companies, and the abstinence that I have heard constantly from startups,“ hey, we face difficulty in raising institutional investment capital. ”At that time in Silicon Valley, most of the investment capital went to the very mature application layer or the application layer for some mature computing platforms Very. “

Many have changed since then.

Now, after investing in startups for 10 years, said Winterroth, a partner in Eclipse, said that the time for investing in robots was not better than ever. The starting startup market has matured the robots and has become much better -running devices and programs – and cheaper.

Investing in the category also acquires momentum. Investors poured $ 6 billion in robots in the first seven months of 2025, according to Crunchbase data. The data company predicts that this year’s aesthetics of financing will give up 2024, making it one of the only categories that are not considered a financing enhancement.

Although one can argue that robots see an increase in the investor’s interest due to artificial intelligence – it is not a mistake to recognize the role of artificial intelligence in the progress of automatic technology – investors who have focused on the category for a longer period than the past few years said that the industry has not reached this point just for the progress of artificial intelligence over the past few years.

Reaching maturity

Winterte said that the real catalyst for the start of the start of the momentum has already occurred in 2012, when Amazon got a small start -up company based in Massachusetts, by Amazon.

“I would like to say that the acquisition of KIVA systems was the acquisition that launched 1,000 robotic companies,” said Winteroth. “Between 2011 and 2015, 2016, this was really the case. I just saw a number of different new companies. Some of them are 6 river systems, or Clearpath Robotics, were successful, but most of them were not. But this talent learns and these educational compounds, and they were brought to the next group of projects.”

He said that this first wave helped attract engineers to this sector and helped companies discover the product products.

Keira Nodelman, a partner in Bee Partners, chanted this. Noodleman Techcrunch told the last decade of experience and error helped startups to know what the market is already searching for when it comes to robots and automation.

Some companies, such as Rapid Robotics, supported by Noodleman, are closed in an attempt to find out what the market wants. These failures helped the next batch of startups, who now have a much better idea than potential customers from this sector want.

She said Noodleman had a similar experience with her own investment thesis, which changed with the maturity of the market.

“The manufacture of lights is assumed that there are zero people in the episode; this is not only happening. We have already been proven in 2010,” Noodleman said. “Let me take a simple task, and the machine tendency, all the hand of someone puts something inside and outside the device. The point here is that you can imagine the number of low fruits and the frequent tasks that exist, such as the machine tends.”

Fadi Saad, the general partner in Cybernetix projects that focus on early robots, launched his company before the mutation of artificial intelligence after he noticed that he spends a lot of time linking robots companies in the early stages to the sources of financing during his period as an institution involved in Massrobotics.

Saad said that the decrease in the costs of the devices prompted the investor’s interest in the sector, noting that it is the cheapest building robots today for more than five years. This allows companies to have a widely applicable track and make it more attractive to potential project supporters.

Saad said: “The cost of building robots has decreased significantly.” “Progress in sensors, calculating and battery technology, all of this, was the perfect timing to start full robots.”

Developments in artificial intelligence do not harm the industry either. While AI is nominated by many as the main reason behind the start of robots in seeing an increase in attention-along with the MUSK magic with human robots-it is not the only factor.

Saad added that although artificial intelligence and large language models can be useful for robots training, these LLMS were primarily trained in online information, while robots interact with the real world.

There are companies that build models based on real life data; Nafidia has just released A new set of world models To train robots in August. But Saad expected that it would take a little longer to capture and train robots, especially those that will be alongside people, on the world’s data.

present day

The momentum in the industry may start swelling, but this does not mean that every startup has discovered the best way so far. Also, some groups are among ripe robots, such as others.

Some of the first few markets that adopt robots and automation, including manufacturing, storage and construction, are still attractive to the start of the startup of the robots.

For Winterroth, Saad, Noodleman, Health Care and Surgery Robots are still a convincing area to invest in it as well. Noodleman adds Eldercare to this category as well.

“Helping at home is interesting, as she came from me after she looked at industrial robots for 10 years,” Awadelman said. “Manufacturing and mining, burning deficiency in employment, and the advanced population, no human beings are at any cost, so that incomplete robots are better than nothing.”

Saad added that the vertically concentrated robots companies tend to reach more realistic and physical data, also, from the horizontal players.

One of the fields that this VCS does not have is Humanoids or the consumer-especially the consumer-focused humanity.

Saad is not convinced that people will want to get a robot at their home anytime. He added that even the non -human robots that focus on the consumer have struggled to make consumers enthusiastic.

“The only successful consumer robot, IROBOT, failed to reach a second work,” Saad said. “Billiards Cleaning Robot, Hasa Diggling, Floor Cleaning Robot, none of them has worked for any reason.”

While the industry is still far from the commercial success of the most complex automatic models, such as Humanoids, VCS flows on more capital in the sector. Although this interest increases the costs of deals, the increase in interest is a positive net for this industry, Winette and Sad said, with the continued growth of the potential customer base in startups.

“There are sufficient examples of successful commercial institutions, successful robots companies, which have become a valuable commercial organization,” Winterog said. “Ten or 15 years ago, it was doubtful whether there would be a large and prosperous market for these types of solutions. Now there is a lot of awareness of customers.”