Eka Robotics, a startup based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has secured $150 million in a Series A funding round. The investment values the company at $1.45 billion post-money.
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and F-Prime, with continued participation from seed investors Obvious Ventures and E14 Fund. The company plans to use the capital to scale its Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model and accelerate customer deployments.
The VFA model utilizes reinforcement learning in simulation to train robots for complex tasks, such as screwing in light bulbs or inserting wires. Eka reports that its systems can handle 1,500 unfamiliar objects per hour, which the company states is approximately 2.5 times faster than the human baseline of 600 operations per hour.
The startup was founded by Pulkit Agrawal and Tuomas Haarnoja. The team includes researchers with backgrounds from institutions and companies such as MIT, Berkeley, Google DeepMind, Boston Dynamics, and Microsoft.
Eka Robotics is positioned at a lower valuation compared to some competitors in the robotics space, such as Physical Intelligence, Generalist, and Skild AI. The company is now focused on demonstrating the reliability of its systems in long-term factory production environments.
