Major Robot Companies Making Moves in 2026
Robotics funding is running ahead of any year on record, Big Tech has bought its way into humanoids, and a handful of “robot brain” startups just raised sums that used to be reserved for chipmakers. Here is who moved in 2026 — and why it matters if you rent or buy robots.
If 2025 was the year robotics became investable, 2026 is the year the money arrived in force. According to Crunchbase, robotics startups have already raised about $18.8 billion so far this year — more than the roughly $15 billion raised across all of 2025. That capital is reshaping the supply side of the market you buy and rent robots from, so it is worth knowing who is behind the moves.
The “robot brain” megarounds
The biggest cheques went not to hardware but to the AI that runs it. Skild AI, which is building what it calls an “omni-bodied” model to control many kinds of robot, announced a $1.4 billion raise in January that lifted its valuation past $14 billion, in a round led by SoftBank with participation from NVIDIA’s venture arm, Bezos Expeditions and others. Physical Intelligence raised a $600 million Series B led by Alphabet’s CapitalG in late 2025 at a reported $5.6 billion valuation, and Bloomberg has since reported it is in talks for roughly $1 billion more at a valuation above $11 billion.
The through-line is that investors are betting on general-purpose robot software — the same shift toward foundation models covered in our look at new service robot technologies. When one “brain” can drive greeters, cleaners and pickers alike, every hardware maker downstream gets more capable at once.
Big Tech and the hardware makers
Meta made its move into physical AI by acquiring San Diego-based Assured Robot Intelligence in May and folding the team into its Superintelligence Labs unit, a signal that the humanoid race now includes the largest platform companies. On the hardware side, Apptronik raised $520 million in February at a reported $5.5 billion valuation and deepened its tie-up with Google DeepMind, whose Gemini Robotics models run on its Apollo humanoid. Figure AI, meanwhile, is reported to be valued near $39 billion after an OpenAI-led round, and China’s Unitree is scaling shipments faster than any rival as it pushes toward a five-figure annual unit count.
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Open the directoryWhy it matters if you rent or buy
Funding headlines can feel far removed from a booking form, but they land on your side of the market in three concrete ways. First, more suppliers and fleets: capital is funding new rental and Robots-as-a-Service operators, which means more choice and more competitive pricing when you search the directory. Second, faster capability: robots bought or rented today improve on a software cadence, so the gap between a demo and a dependable working unit keeps shrinking — good news for hospitality, warehouse and event deployments alike.
Third, and most useful for buyers, the pace of change is an argument for renting first. When valuations and models are moving this fast, committing five or six figures to hardware that may be a generation behind within a year is a real risk. Renting lets you put a current-spec humanoid or service robot to work now and reassess as the market settles. For the trade-offs in plain numbers, see our guide on what it costs to rent a robot.
The bottom line
The 2026 money is chasing software as much as steel, and it is concentrating in a few well-funded players. For businesses, that concentration is mostly good: it funds better robots and more places to rent them, without forcing you to pick a winner yourself. Start from what you actually need — a robot for a date, a venue or a task — and let the directory match you to verified companies that can deliver it.
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Related news
Sources
- Crunchbase News — “Robotics Startups On Fire As Venture Funding Surges To Record Numbers In 2026” (2026 vs 2025 totals).
- Yahoo Finance — “Skild AI Raises $1.4B, Now Valued Over $14B” (round size, valuation and investors).
- Bloomberg — coverage of Physical Intelligence’s Series B valuation and reported follow-on raise.
- TechCrunch — “Physical Intelligence is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion, again.”
- Reporting on Meta’s acquisition of Assured Robot Intelligence and its Superintelligence Labs unit.
- Apptronik — Apollo funding and Google DeepMind Gemini Robotics partnership announcements.
Deal values, valuations and investor names are paraphrased from the reporting cited above and were accurate as of publication; private-round figures can move quickly.