Robotics startups: the money is moving to the brain
Robotics valuations increasingly separate the physical robot from the intelligence layer, with investors betting that the brain carries the margin.
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Fifteen robotics startups, over a hundred billion dollars in combined value, and eight of them do not build a single physical robot.
Figure AI sits at $39 billion, roughly a third of the entire list’s value, on the strength of humanoids already working shifts at a BMW plant. But the number that says more about where this is heading is Skild AI’s: over $14 billion for a company that builds only the intelligence layer, no hardware at all, designed to run on any robot regardless of who made it. The money is starting to separate the body from the brain, and betting the brain is where the real margin lives.
Five of the top six companies on the list are American. China takes six of the fifteen spots but its highest-valued firm sits at number eight, worth a fraction of Figure’s number. The pattern is familiar: the US wins on valuation, China wins on volume, and Europe is not really in either conversation yet. Neura Robotics, Europe’s best-funded humanoid company, is valued at roughly an eighth of Figure AI despite comparable funding and technology. That gap is not about engineering talent. It is about who is willing to write the check at that scale.
Robots are heading into homes next. 1X is already taking preorders for a laundry-folding, dishwasher-unloading home robot, deliveries planned for next year. Robotics is still smaller than AI as a category, but it is compounding faster than almost anything else in tech right now.