AI-powered robotics company Apptronik announced Wednesday that it has raised $520 million in an extension of its $415 million Series A raise in February 2025, bringing the total round to over $935 million.
Existing backers B Capital, Google, Mercedes-Benz and Peak6 joined new investors including AT&T Ventures and manufacturing giant John Deere participating in the extension.
The Austin-based company says that after its initial Series A announcement, it received “substantial inbound investor interest,” which led it to open the new extension of the round “at a 3x multiple of the Series A valuation.”
It did not reveal its new valuation. However, the Austin-American Statesman reported in November that Apptronik had reached a valuation of $5 billion after raising $331 million earlier that month, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company confirmed that the $331 million raised is a part of this Series A extension round.
With the latest funding, Apptronik has now raised nearly $1 billion since its 2016 inception.
Robotics startup funding hit a record high last year, per Crunchbase data. Startups in the sector raised nearly $14 billion in funding in 2025, up from $8.2 billion in 2024, even topping the $13.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021.
So far, that momentum appears to be continuing in 2026. Besides this raise, Skild AI, a robotics company building an “omni-bodied” brain to operate any robot for any task, announced in January that it had raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to more than $14 billion.
Human connections
Apptronik was founded on the belief that for humanoid robots to reach mass adoption, the industry had to solve for intuitive, safe human-robot interaction, and improve the cost and ease of manufacturing these robots.
The company claims its flagship robot, Apollo, is designed with “approachability at its forefront.”
“Its friendly head and face, eye-level cameras, and natural color palette are engineered to make human interactions feel engaging and more natural,” a spokesperson told Crunchbase News.
Apollo is designed to “revolutionize” human-robot interaction, initially in industries such as logistics and manufacturing, with future planned expansion into retail, healthcare, and eventually, the home, according to the company.
It’s designed to take on physically demanding work and labor-intensive operational processes in manufacturing and logistics and to work alongside human counterparts to transport components, sort and kit, among other tasks.
Apptronik has commercial agreements with companies across several industries such as automotive manufacturing, logistics and consumer packaged goods, including Mercedes-Benz, GXO Logistics and Jabil. It also has a strategic partnership with Google DeepMind “to build the next generation of humanoid robots, powered by Gemini Robotics.”
The company says it will use the capital to ramp up production of Apollo and expand its global network of commercial and pilot deployments. Apptronik has worked on developing 15 robotic systems, including NASA’s humanoid robot Valkyrie.
Apptronik’s business is built on a Robotics as a Service model, which includes the robot hardware, software updates, service and support. The company started out of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the The University of Texas at Austin and has nearly 300 employees, double its size a year ago.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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