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Look AI Ventures has backed Embodied AI, a Lausanne-based robotics startup building robots that learn new tasks directly on factory production lines. The round was led by Faber VC, with participation from Techshop Capital, Kickfund, Plug and Play San Francisco, Excellis, and Vento.
Most industrial robots today are programmed for fixed, repetitive tasks such as pick-and-place. Two kinds of work are still largely done by hand. The first is high-mix production with frequent changeovers. The second is dexterous work that needs fine motor control, such as cable handling or electronics assembly.
Embodied AI is targeting this work. The company sees its automation as a way to keep manufacturing in Europe competitive as high-volume production moves to other regions.
Rather than building a single general-purpose AI model, Embodied AI is developing a platform to gather data and train small, custom AI models directly in production without disrupting uptime. Several task-specific models work together, so the robot can handle variation within a task.
When needed, a human operator can intervene remotely and correct the robot’s behavior, so production continues without interruption. Each intervention improves the underlying models, moving the robot progressively toward full autonomy.
The robots’ hardware is engineered from the ground up, with physical safety built into the mechanical design as a foundational safety layer. The company calls this combination of autonomy, adaptability, and safety the “Embodied AI flywheel”.
Embodied AI has partnered with global industrial players to deploy robots in electronics production, kitting and flexible cable handling. The team is also already serving some of the largest manufacturers in Europe, deploying robots on the factory floor for electronics production, logistics and automotive assembly.
The company is a Google DeepMind partner and part of the Nvidia Inception program.
The funding will first go toward bringing the company’s technology onto customer production lines. It will then be used to scale up robot production and refine the company’s data collection and model training pipeline.
A significant share is set aside for hiring researchers, engineers and commercial leaders at the company’s offices in Lausanne and Rome.
“By vertically integrating proprietary soft-robotic hardware, teleoperation and autonomy-ready software, Embodied AI is creating a fundamentally new robotics platform, inherently safe, cost-effective and designed for real-world deployment. We believe this approach can remove key barriers to adoption and position Embodied AI as one of the defining companies in the emerging physical AI landscape,” says Sofia Santos, Partner, Faber VC.
Embodied AI is led by founders:
The scientific board includes Prof. Cosimo Della Santina (TU Delft) and Prof. Josie Hughes (EPFL). The wider team includes scientists and engineers from Oxford, TU Delft and MIT.
“Our approach prioritises practicality over the hype of the moment. We are starting by deploying robots with a physically safe design that learn through remote operations. The capital raised will enable us to bring our technology stack directly onto our customers’ production lines, demonstrating ROI, and to lay the groundwork for the development of our European robotic workforce,” says Francesco Stella, Co-founder & CEO, Embodied AI.
