Robotics startups hit record $18.8B in 2026 funding, surpassing full-year 2025 with embodied AI driving mega-rounds
Global robotics startups have raised $18.8 billion in the first half of 2026, already eclipsing the full-year 2025 total of $15 billion and crushing the 2021 peak of $14.1 billion. The surge is driven by embodied AI—physical robots with real-time interaction capabilities—attracting venture capital at scale as investors reposition robotics from asset-heavy hardware bets to AI-native software platforms.
Mega-rounds are defining the landscape: Skild AI (robot foundation models) raised $1.4 billion at a $14 billion valuation in January, tripling from a $4.5 billion post in July; Saronic (autonomous naval vessels) closed $1.75 billion at $9.25 billion; Neura Robotics ($1.4 billion Series C); and Shihang Intelligent (water robots, $1 billion Series A). These rounds reflect a new architecture: pure-software platforms like Skild licensing AI brains to hardware OEMs, not vertical stacks controlling full integration.
For practitioners, the capital concentration signals where automation is moving: software intelligence licensing across horizontal hardware, with proprietary data moats replacing hardware lock-in. Skild's software multiples now exceed hardware OEM valuations by 3x+ on a revenue basis. Six months remain in 2026; the sector is on pace for ~$25 billion—a structural shift that's reshaping supply-chain and manufacturing economics.
Sources
- Primary source
- news.crunchbase.com
“Globally, robotics startups have so far raised $18.8 billion in 2026, compared to $15 billion in the full year of 2025. The figure also handily surpasses the $14.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021, and we still have more than six months of fundraising left.”
- news.crunchbase.com
“In January, Skild AI, a robotics company building an "omni-bodied" brain to operate any robot for any task, announced that it had raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to over $14 billion. That financing came just over seven months after Skild raised a $135 million Series B at a $4.5 billion valuation.”
- news.crunchbase.com
“Topping the list of largest deals in 2026 so far is Austin-based Saronic, a defense tech startup focused on autonomous sea vessels. In March, the 4-year-old company raised $1.75 billion in Series D funding, bringing its total funding to around $2.6 billion. Kleiner Perkins led the round, which set Saronic's valuation at $9.25 billion.”
- medium.com
“SoftBank acquired ABB's robotics division—$2.3 billion in annual revenue, 7,000 employees, decades of installed base—for $5.4 billion. That is roughly 2.3x revenue. At the time of the Skild investment, Skild was running at approximately $30 million in annual revenue. SoftBank's implied valuation was multiples higher on a revenue basis. The gap between those two multiples is the market's explicit statement: recurring software revenue on a scalable platform is worth far more per dollar than hardware revenue.”