mimic, a Zurich-based robotics firm, has raised €13.8 million in Seed funding to deploy its frontier bodily AI throughout industries, enabling robots to deal with advanced, dexterous duties that standard machines can not.

The spherical was led by Elaia, alongside Speedinvest, with participation from Founderful, 1st form, 10X Founders, 2100 Ventures and Sequoia Scout Fund, bringing mimic’s complete funding to over €17 million.

“Humanoids are thrilling, however there aren’t many industrial situations the place the full-body type issue really provides worth,” says Stephan-Daniel Gravert, Co-founder and CPO at mimic. “Our method pairs AI-driven dexterous robotic arms with confirmed, off-the-shelf robotic arms to ship the identical capabilities in a manner that’s a lot less complicated, extra dependable and quickly deployable.”

Throughout the continent, startups are attracting important backing for clever and versatile robotic techniques: Greece’s Progressive Robotics raised €1.55 million to increase its no-code automation instruments for SMEs; Slovenia’s Dawn Robotics secured €7.3 million for simulation-trained industrial robots; and the UK’s BOW obtained €4.7 million to simplify robotic programming.

Bigger rounds, reminiscent of Power Robotics in Germany (€11.5 million for AI-driven inspection) and Common Instinct in Switzerland (€114 million on the intersection of robotics and gaming), spotlight how capital is flowing towards each software-led orchestration and hardware-AI integration.

Inside this context, mimic’s Swiss base strengthens the nation’s rising robotics cluster and locations it amongst Europe’s extra technically formidable ventures – linking dexterous manipulation and AI foundation-model analysis with industrial automation wants.

“Our normal objective AI fashions permit us to automate guide labour in a manner that merely was not doable earlier than,” says Elvis Nava, Co-founder and CTO at mimic. “Because of our distinctive give attention to human-like dexterity and human knowledge, we’re aggressive on the robotic basis mannequin layer in addition to the appliance layer.” 

Based in 2024 by Stefan Weirich (CEO), Stephan-Daniel Gravert (CPO), Elvis Nava (CTO), Benedek Forrai (Founding Engineer) and Robert Katzschmann (Scientific Advisor) as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, mimic brings collectively a multidisciplinary group of 25 engineers, researchers, and operators.

The corporate allows robots to deal with advanced, dexterous duties autonomously. The core focus is creating an AI basis mannequin and humanoid robotic arms which make human-level dexterity deployable throughout industries.

By combining superior AI, scalable {hardware}, and a singular answer to the info shortage in robotics, the corporate goals to construct a basis for the following technology of clever automation – robots that may lastly do what folks do, on the scale business calls for.

“We’re at an inflection level in robotics the place learning-based techniques meet actual industrial wants,” says Stefan Weirich, Co-founder and CEO at mimic. “We make dexterity deployable at scale, closing the hole between what AI can do within the lab and what factories really need. Europe has the expertise, the infrastructure, and the demand, and we’re constructing the corporate that brings all of this collectively.”

On manufacturing unit flooring around the globe, tens of millions of intricate guide duties nonetheless rely on human talent. These duties stay out of attain for conventional automation throughout industries together with manufacturing, meeting and logistics. With labour shortages rising and industries reshoring manufacturing amid world uncertainty, the necessity for versatile and clever robots has by no means been clearer.

Conventional robots excel at repetitive, pre-programmed motions in managed environments, however require expensive setup and customized coding for every activity. On the similar time, the race to construct humanoid robots has drawn billions in funding, led largely by corporations within the US and China, however adoption stays very restricted. Security and regulatory issues, excessive prices and restricted dexterity have all slowed real-world deployment.

In accordance with knowledge supplied by the corporate, the worldwide humanoid and dexterous robotics market alone may attain $38 billion by 2035, inside a broader robotics market estimated between $200 billion and $1 trillion by 2040.

mimic appears to be like to sort out this by constructing frontier bodily AI fashions educated on real-world human demonstrations, utilizing revolutionary strategies to beat the info shortage downside in robotics.

Clément Vanden Driessche, Companion at Elaia,says “Elaia is thrilled to steer the Seed spherical in mimic. The world-class group at mimic is addressing probably the most difficult issues in bodily AI: dexterous manipulation. mimic’s breakthrough method integrates a proprietary robotic hand, state-of-the-art basis fashions for robotics, and novel knowledge acquisition and coaching strategies.”

Expert operators put on mimic’s proprietary knowledge assortment gadgets whereas performing their day by day work on manufacturing unit flooring, capturing detailed motion knowledge from dwell manufacturing settings with out disrupting operations. These demonstrations are then used to coach AI fashions by way of imitation studying, enabling mimic’s humanoid robotic arms to reliably reproduce human method.

The corporate’s bodily AI fashions be sure that robots autonomously react to altering positions and orientations of objects, deal with disturbances and self-correct their actions, seamlessly working in environments designed for people.

Vincent Faber, Funding Supervisor at Elaia provides “This allows autonomous, versatile manipulation and unlocks a beforehand untapped section of the automation market, the place the demand for versatile options continues to develop.”

mimic’s know-how is already being piloted with top-tier producers, together with Fortune 500 corporations and world automotive manufacturers. mimic can be partnering with main multinational logistics suppliers and seeing robust buyer demand throughout many different labour-intensive sectors.

Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, Common Companion at Speedinvest, says, “At Speedinvest, we’ve at all times believed that Europe’s power lies in marrying world-class engineering with foundational analysis. With mimic, we see precisely that: a platform that unlocks human-level dexterity with frontier AI and solves billion-dollar issues on manufacturing unit flooring in the present day. That is the second Europe steps ahead to compete and lead within the new period of AI and robotics.”