When Seth Winterroth departed GE Ventures to co-found Eclipse Ventures in 2015, robotics was at the forefront of his thoughts. He had noticed that many early-stage robotics companies were finding it tough to get off the ground due to a lack of investor enthusiasm.
“These were teams fresh out of postdoctoral programs at Waterloo, CMU, MIT, launching robotics startups, but they kept telling me, ‘we’re having a really tough time securing funding from institutional VCs,’” Winterroth shared with TechCrunch. “Back then in Silicon Valley, most venture dollars were flowing into well-established application layers built atop mature computing platforms.”
Much has shifted since that time.
After a decade of backing robotics companies, Winterroth, now a partner at Eclipse, believes the sector is more promising than ever for investors. The robotics startup ecosystem has matured, and both the hardware and software powering modern robots have improved greatly—while costs have fallen.
Venture funding in robotics is also accelerating. According to Crunchbase, investors committed $6 billion to robotics startups in the first seven months of 2025. The company projects that this year’s total will surpass that of 2024, making robotics one of the rare non-AI sectors to see an uptick in investment.
It’s easy to say that artificial intelligence is fueling the renewed attention in robotics—and it’s true that AI has contributed to the field’s progress—but investors who have been in the space for some time argue that the industry’s current momentum isn’t solely due to recent AI breakthroughs.
Reaching maturation
Winterroth points to a pivotal moment for robotics: Amazon’s acquisition of Kiva Systems, a small Massachusetts startup, in 2013, which truly set the industry in motion.
“I often say the Kiva Systems deal sparked the creation of a thousand robotics startups,” Winterroth remarked. “From 2011 through about 2016, you saw a surge of new companies forming. While some, like 6 River Systems and Clearpath Robotics, found success, most didn’t. But the knowledge gained from those failures carried over and fueled the next generation of startups.”
That initial wave brought more engineers into robotics and helped companies better understand how to match their products to market needs, according to Winterroth.
Kira Noodleman, partner at Bee Partners, agreed. She told TechCrunch that the experimentation and setbacks of the past ten years taught startups what customers actually want in robotics and automation.
Some startups, like Rapid Robotics which Noodleman supported, ended up closing while exploring market fit. Yet these setbacks have given the latest crop of founders a clearer sense of what buyers are looking for in this space.
Noodleman noted her own investment strategy evolved in step with the sector’s development.
“The concept of fully automated, ‘lights out’ factories with no human involvement just hasn’t materialized—we saw that as early as the 2010s,” she explained. “Take a simple job like machine tending: it’s just a person putting something in and taking it out of a machine. It shows how many repetitive, easy-to-automate tasks exist, like machine tending.”
Fady Saad, general partner at Cybernetix Ventures—a firm focused on early-stage robotics—also founded his company before the AI surge, after realizing he was spending significant time connecting young robotics startups with investors during his tenure as a MassRobotics co-founder.
Saad observed that decreasing hardware costs have also made the sector more appealing to investors. Robots are cheaper to build now than they were five years ago, which helps companies scale more easily and makes them more interesting to venture capitalists.
“The expenses involved in building robots have dropped sharply,” Saad explained. “Improvements in sensors, computing, batteries—it was the ideal moment to begin developing comprehensive robotics solutions.”
Progress in AI is also benefiting the sector. While AI is often cited as the primary reason robotics is gaining traction—along with the public’s fascination with humanoid robots driven by figures like Elon Musk—it isn’t the only driver.
Saad pointed out that AI models and large language models can assist in robot training, but these models largely rely on digital information, while robots must interact with the physical world.
Some businesses are now developing models based on real-world data; for example, Nvidia introduced a new suite of world models for training robots in August. Still, Saad anticipates that it will take more time to collect and utilize world data to train robots, particularly those that work alongside humans.
Present day
While momentum in the robotics space is building, not every startup has found the optimal path yet, and certain areas remain less developed than others.
Industries that initially adopted robotics and automation—such as manufacturing, warehousing, and construction—are still favored by investors supporting robotics startups.
Winterroth, Saad, and Noodleman are all particularly interested in healthcare and surgical robotics. Noodleman also highlights eldercare as a promising field.
“Home assistance is a compelling area, especially after my decade-long focus on industrial robots,” Noodleman said. “Industries like manufacturing and mining face severe labor shortages and aging workforces—there are no workers available, no matter the pay. Even imperfect robots are a better solution than none.”
Saad notes that vertical robotics companies generally have greater access to real-world and physical data than those with more generalist approaches.
However, these investors are less enthusiastic about humanoids and consumer-focused robotics—especially those designed specifically for consumers.
Saad doubts that people will be eager to have robots in their homes in the near future. Even non-humanoid consumer robotics companies have found it difficult to generate excitement among buyers, he said.
“iRobot is the only consumer robotics company to truly succeed, but even they haven’t managed to replicate that success,” Saad commented. “Attempts at pool cleaning robots, lawn mowers, mopping and floor-cleaning bots haven’t caught on, for a variety of reasons.”
Although mainstream acceptance of more complex robots, like humanoids, is still years away, VCs are increasingly investing in the field. Even though this interest is raising the price of deals, both Winterroth and Saad view the heightened attention as beneficial for the industry as more potential customers emerge for robotics startups.
“There are now several examples of robotics companies that have grown into valuable businesses,” Winterroth observed. “A decade or more ago, it was unclear if there would ever be a large, vibrant market for these types of solutions. Now, customer awareness is much higher.”
