Humanoid Raises $152M to Scale Industrial Robots Across Europe

Humanoid has reached unicorn status before its robots have entered mass production.

Founded in 2024 by Artem Sokolov, the London-based robotics company is now entering a more demanding phase: turning investor confidence, industrial partnerships, and large deployment ambitions into machines that can operate reliably across thousands of factory shifts.

Humanoid has raised $152 million in Series A funding at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures.

Wheels are the commercial shortcut

Humanoid is developing both wheeled and bipedal machines, but its first mass-production push will focus on robots that move on wheels.

That decision is less visually dramatic than building a human-shaped machine that walks. It may also be more commercially practical.

Factories, warehouses and logistics centers are generally designed around flat floors. A wheeled base can offer greater stability, simpler maintenance and longer operating time while still allowing a humanoid upper body to work with equipment built for people.

Humanoid plans to begin beta deployments at customer facilities in Q4 2026, initially targeting logistics, manufacturing, retail and related industrial environments.

The software has to travel between machines

The company’s hardware runs on KinetIQ, its proprietary four-layer AI framework for perception, reasoning and physical task execution.

This is where Humanoid’s long-term value proposition sits. A robot built for one narrowly defined task may deliver useful automation, but it does not create a general industrial platform. Humanoid wants KinetIQ to carry learned capabilities across different robots, facilities and workflows.

The company has grown to more than 250 employees and operates from London, Boston, Vancouver and San Diego. Its challenge is no longer recruiting a research team. It is building an intelligence layer that remains dependable when environments, objects and operating conditions change.

Industrial partners are becoming part of the product

Humanoid has announced relationships with SAP, NVIDIA, Siemens, Bosch and Schaeffler.

Bosch will act as a contract manufacturing partner while contributing expertise in hardware design, production and supply chains. Schaeffler is both an investor and a commercial partner, with an agreement covering the planned deployment of thousands of robots in manufacturing environments.

Those relationships give Humanoid more than customer logos. They give the company access to manufacturing knowledge, factory environments and operational requirements that cannot be reproduced inside a robotics laboratory.

They also increase the expectations attached to the $1.35 billion valuation.

The real milestone is not the first deployment

A successful pilot can prove that a robot performs a task. A viable industrial fleet must prove much more.

Customers will measure uptime, intervention rates, maintenance costs, safety performance and the time required to adapt each machine to a new workflow. They will also compare the robot’s total operating cost with existing automation and human labor—not with a laboratory prototype.

Humanoid’s funding gives it the resources to launch its next platform, develop KinetIQ and begin mass manufacturing.

The unresolved question is whether the company can preserve performance as production moves from tens of robots to hundreds or thousands.

Humanoid does not need another impressive stage demonstration. It needs machines that become ordinary enough for factories to depend on them.

Source : Humanoid Official Announcement