Eka Robotics has closed a $150 million Series A led by a16z and F-Prime, valuing the startup at $1.45 billion.
Founded by MIT and DeepMind researchers, the company built a vision-force-action model and force-sensitive gripper architecture trained via physics simulation.
Startup Eka Robotics has raised $150 million in a funding round that values the company at $1,45 billion. The round was led by venture capital funds a16z and F-Prime.
Who is behind Eka Robotics?
The company was founded by MIT professor Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja.
The system they developed combines a special gripping hook with pressure sensors and a new approach to artificial intelligence. Unlike traditional systems that rely primarily on vision, the new model takes into account language, force information, and movements.
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The robot's performance
The system can pick up about 1.500 objects weighing up to one kilogram in an hour, surpassing the capabilities of a human who moves at a rate of about 600 objects per hour. According to the data, the robot reliably picks up objects more than 95% of the time, without needing to be retrained for each different object.
The material for the gripper costs less than $1.000 and is designed to withstand 5 million operating cycles, with the ultimate goal of reaching 20 million.
How the system was trained
To train the robot, the creators used a digital physics simulator. This allowed for the application of machine learning on a large scale, producing thousands of hours of experience in just a few minutes.
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