Antioch lands $4.25M in preseed funding to accelerate autonomous robot testing with digital twins – News

Robotics software testing startup Antioch Inc. says it’s going to make science fiction a reality after raising $4.25 million in a preseed funding today.

Antioch was founded earlier this year by a team of Stanford University alumni that has firsthand experience of the difficulties of testing autonomous software for robotics systems. Advances in AI promise to transform the capabilities of robots by making them more intelligent, so they can operate autonomously and safely alongside human workforces in different environments.

But as promising as these systems are, they’re extremely intricate, and what works for one kind of robot might not necessarily have the same results in another, because these days there are so many different kinds of robotic systems being built. Multiple companies are building humanoid robots, for instance, and there are dog-like robots for search and rescue missions, forklift truck-style robots for working in warehouses, robotic arms and even drones that qualify as robots. What that means is that the software enabling them to act autonomously must be customized for each kind of robot, and that’s where problems arise.

Generally, to test new software in a robot, it requires setting up the physical machine, which requires lots of time, energy and space. Whenever the software is tweaked, engineers need to waste more time resetting the robot, or move it to different environments to test different capabilities. It’s a long and arduous process that Antioch wants to help developers avoid.

Its solution is a cloud simulation platform that enables teams to create digital twins of any kind of robot, so that they can quickly validate any AI-powered system before it’s deployed in the real world. Its goal is to eliminate the lengthy testing cycles that slow down robotic development. So instead of spending hours resetting a robot or moving it from one place to another, developers can just click a few buttons to get ready for the next test. Moreover, they can carry out thousands of tests in parallel by spinning up multiple digital twins at once.

Antioch co-founder Harry Mellsop previously worked at Tesla Inc., using in-house simulation tools that allowed the company to develop and iterate robotics and other autonomous systems extremely rapidly, and now he wants to bring the same capability to other companies. “Right now, the way companies train AI for robots is absurdly manual,” he said.

According to Mellsop, some of the robotics companies he’s talked to have rented Airbnbs just to be able to test household robots, while others have spent millions of dollars on building mock warehouses to simulate their robots’ operating environments. “[Testing] is slow, expensive and wildly inefficient,” he said. “With Antioch, you can do all of that virtually.”

Mellsop’s co-founders all possess similar experience. For instance, former Google DeepMind engineer Colton Swingle was in charge of large-scale validation projects that involved simulating different kinds of infrastructure to test software products. Collin Schlager, meanwhile, worked for Meta Platforms Inc.’s Reality Labs unit, where he was involved in building virtual simulations for product testing.

Antioch’s fourth co-founder is Alex Langshur, who previously served as head of product at a startup called Deep Grey Research. He argues that the ability to simulate robotics is critical for U.S. national security too. He said the country’s manufacturing capabilities have systematically eroded over the last 40 years due to endless offshoring. Under President Donald Trump’s administration, the country is now looking to reindustrialize as a national security imperative, but the problem is that companies don’t want to pay the excessive labor costs associated with domestic manufacturing.

“The only economically viable way to reindustrialize is by augmenting our workforce with robotics and automation,” Langshur said. “Efficient, scalable testing to ensure that robots are safe and effective is now the rate-limiting step in making this happen, and that’s why we decided Antioch needed to be built.”

The startup has been operating in “stealth mode” so far, but has already secured a number of customers, including many of the country’s top robotics and autonomous software firms, and even some Fortune 500 enterprises, it says. With today’s funding, it says, it’ll be able to make its software available to everyone before the year is out.

The round was led by A* and saw participation from a host of other backers, including Abstract Ventures, MaC Venture Capital, Box Group and New Zealand-based Icehouse Ventures, as well as angel investors such as Foxglove Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Adrian Macneil and Palantir Technologies Inc. Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar.

A* General Partner Bennett Siegel said Antioch’s platform is key to unlocking the sci-fi movie vision of robots becoming a part of everyday life. “Companies are currently spending hundreds of millions a year to have a horse in the AI robotics race, but technology like Antioch’s can reduce the hurdles considerably, giving more businesses a chance to innovate,” he said.

Photo: Antioch