Eka Robotics has secured $150 million in a Series A funding round, pushing the company's post-money valuation to $1.45 billion. The round was led by venture capital firms a16z and F-Prime.
The startup, founded by Pulkit Agrawal and Tuomas Haarnoja, has developed a physical AI model based on a vision-force-action architecture. This approach prioritizes force-sensitive interaction over traditional vision-language-action models.
The system utilizes a specialized gripper that costs less than $1,000 and is currently rated for 5 million duty cycles. The company aims to reach a target of 20 million cycles to match standard industrial arms.
In performance tests, the robot can handle approximately 1,500 objects per hour, each weighing up to 1 kg, with a reported success rate exceeding 95%. The model is trained in a physics simulator that generates thousands of hours of experience in minutes.
Eka is currently conducting pilot programs with industrial customers focused on pick-and-place tasks and wire manipulation. The company plans to scale these operations while addressing the challenges of long-term reliability in assembly line environments.
