Humanoid Raises $152 Million to Scale Industrial Humanoid Robots

London-based robotics company Humanoid has raised $152 million in Series A funding, giving the two-year-old startup a post-money valuation of $1.35 billion.

The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from industrial groups Schaeffler and Bosch, alongside Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital and Aglaé Ventures. The financing brings Humanoid’s total capital raised to $270 million.

The company plans to use the funding to develop its next generation of industrial robots, expand customer deployments and begin mass manufacturing its wheeled humanoid platform.

Moving From Factory Trials to Commercial Deployments

Humanoid is developing general-purpose robots intended for logistics, manufacturing, retail and other industrial environments. Rather than beginning with household applications, the company is targeting repetitive physical tasks in workplaces already designed around human movement.

According to the company, it has completed nine industrial deployments and accumulated 34,000 robot pre-orders, representing a commercial pipeline valued at approximately $2.4 billion.

One of its most significant agreements is a planned deployment with Schaeffler covering an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 robots across the industrial supplier’s global manufacturing sites by 2032. Initial deployments are expected to begin at two German facilities between December 2026 and June 2027, focusing on box handling, production testing and integration with existing factory systems.

The agreement is structured around a Robot-as-a-Service model that includes fleet software, maintenance, technical support, updates and ongoing performance management. Schaeffler will also supply more than half of the joint actuators required for Humanoid’s wheeled platforms through 2031.

Bosch is expected to provide additional manufacturing capacity, hardware engineering support and supply-chain expertise as production expands.

A Wheeled Robot Designed for Existing Facilities

Humanoid is developing both wheeled and bipedal systems, although its near-term commercial strategy is centered on the HMND 01 Alpha Wheeled platform.

The robot is designed to move through factories and warehouses without requiring extensive changes to existing infrastructure. It can carry payloads of up to 15 kilograms, operate for up to four hours and uses 29 degrees of freedom to perform handling and manipulation tasks.

Wheels offer a practical advantage for facilities with flat floors, where efficiency, stability and battery life may matter more than the ability to climb stairs. This could make wheeled humanoids easier to deploy commercially while more technically demanding bipedal systems continue to mature.

The company says the platform is designed to operate autonomously at approximately human working speed, using high-torque actuators and an integrated perception and control system.

KinetIQ Coordinates Learning and Robot Fleets

At the center of the platform is KinetIQ, Humanoid’s proprietary four-layer AI framework built on NVIDIA (NVDA ) computing hardware.

KinetIQ is intended to manage perception, reasoning, movement and task execution, while a related system called KinetIQ Ascend supports fleet orchestration and learning from real-world industrial activity.

The objective is not simply to program each robot for a fixed sequence of movements. Humanoid is working toward systems that can interpret their surroundings, adjust to changing conditions and improve through trial and error.

This software layer will become increasingly important as companies move from operating individual robots in controlled demonstrations to coordinating fleets across multiple facilities. Robots must be able to receive tasks, report problems, share operational data and function within a customer’s existing safety, cybersecurity and production systems.

Funding an Ambitious Manufacturing Ramp

Humanoid plans to begin deploying beta versions of its next-generation robots during the fourth quarter of 2026. The new funding will also support the start of mass manufacturing for its wheeled platform.

Scaling production remains one of the largest challenges facing the humanoid robotics industry. Building a prototype is substantially different from producing thousands of reliable machines that can operate for long periods in demanding environments.

Industrial customers will evaluate the technology based on practical measures such as uptime, task completion rates, maintenance requirements, integration costs and safety around human workers. Humanoid’s partnerships with established manufacturers could help it address some of these challenges, but its announced pipeline will require a significant expansion in production and support capacity.

Europe’s Growing Physical AI Sector

Humanoid’s valuation reflects the growing level of investment flowing into Physical AI, a category that combines artificial intelligence with machines capable of interacting with the physical world.

Much of the humanoid robotics market has been led by companies in the United States and China. The emergence of a heavily funded UK company, supported by major European manufacturers, suggests that Europe is seeking a larger role in the development and production of intelligent robots.

The next phase of the market will be determined less by demonstrations and more by sustained operation. Robots will need to perform useful work repeatedly, safely and at a cost that compares favorably with conventional automation.

If those requirements can be met, humanoid systems could give manufacturers a more flexible way to automate facilities that were built for people rather than specialized machinery. The technology may be particularly useful for repetitive material handling and logistics tasks that occur across many different industrial settings.

The $152 million round gives Humanoid the resources to move beyond limited trials and test whether its hardware, AI platform and manufacturing partnerships can support deployments at commercial scale.