GoKawiilEka Robotics raises $150M Series A at $1.45B valuation for manipulation AI
Eka Robotics, founded by MIT's Pulkit Agrawal and former Google DeepMind researcher Tuomas Haarnoja, has closed a $150 million Series A round led by a16z and F-Prime, valuing the startup at $1.45 billion. The company built a force-sensitive gripper paired with a new deep-learning model that lets robots grasp roughly 1,500 varied objects per hour with over 95% reliability, outperforming average human picking speed.
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The fast fundraise and high valuation suggest investors see Eka's approach to object manipulation as a meaningful leap beyond typical robotics demos, which have long struggled with reliable grasping. Comments from roboticists comparing the moment to early breakthroughs in legged locomotion indicate the field may view this as a notable technical milestone, though real-world deployment and scaling claims still need independent verification.
- Eka Robotics raised $150M in a Series A round led by a16z and F-Prime.
- The startup is now valued at $1.45 billion post-money.
- Its gripper and AI model reportedly pick objects faster and more reliably than humans in demos.
Source: techcrunch.com — Tim Fernholz, 2026-10-20
Published there as: “Eka is worth $1.45B thanks to a physical AI model that has experts raving”
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